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CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 



OF THE 



Town of Sheffield, 



BERKSHIRE CO., MASS. 



June 18th and 19th, 1876. 



BY THE SECRETARIES OF THE COMMITTEE APPOINTED BY THE TOWN. 







SHEFFIELD. 

1876. 

7T 






s 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Preliminary Statement, ...... 5 

The Proceedings, - . - - - - - 9 

Sermon, by the Rev. Orville Dewey, D. D., - - - 18 

Sermon, by the Rev. Charles M. Hyde, D. D., - - 27 

Historical Address, by Gen. J. G. Barnard, U. S. Army, - 42 

Appendix to Historical Address, .... 6i 

Address upon the Growth and Development of the United 

States op America, by the Hon. Abram H. Dailey, - 69 

Oration, by George A. Hoadley, .... 94 

Remarks of William G. Bates, - - - - - 101 



PRELIMINARY STATEMENT. 



17 7 6. 

At a Town Meeting, legally called, held in Sheffield, Berkshire Co., 
Mass., on the 18th of Jnne, 1776, Capt. William Day being chosen 
moderator, and Stephen Dewey being town clerk, the report of a 
committee, consisting of " Col Ashley, Doctor Lemuel Barnard, Colo 
John Fellows, Col Aron Boot & Capt. Nath el Austin " — which committee 
was chosen "to draw a Besolve to send to the Bepresentative" — was 
heard, and 

"It was put to vote — Whether the inhabitants of the S d town of 
Sheffield, should the Hon ble Continental Congress in their wisdom think 
prudent and for interest and safety of the American Colonies to declare 
s d colonies independent of the kingdom of Great Britton, they the 
inhabitants of s d Sheffield will solemnly engage with their lives and 
fortunes to support them in their measures. 

"Voted in the affirmative: 



" Two dissent's onlv 



"WM. DAY, Moderator." 



18 7 6. 

At the Annual Town Meeting, held April 3, 1876, attention was called 
to the vote passed by the town on June 18, 1776, and on motion it was 
unanimously voted that the Centennial Anniversary of the day be 
observed in a fitting manner. Bev. Orville Dewey, D. D., Oliver Peck, 
M. D., J. Leland Miller, M. D., and Bev. Mason Noble, Jr., were 
chosen a committee to arrange for such a celebration as would properly 
commemorate the prompt and energetic patriotism of the fathers of the 
town. 

The committee thus appointed made arrangements which, through the 
willing cooperation of our citizens, were duly and fully carried out. 
They at first met with some disappointments. F. A. P. Barnard, 
S. T. D., LL. D., President of Columbia College, was obliged, because 
of previous engagements, to decline their invitation to take part in the 
exercises. From Bev. Edmund S. Janes, D. D., Bishop of the Meth. 



Epis. Church, a letter was received which is given below. Hon. Charles 
Dewey Day (grandson of the moderator of the town meeting, held June 
18, 1776), of the Queen's Bench of Canada, was forbidden by the state 
of his health to deliver an address. As the committee did not feel willing 
to call upon any one to take part who could not be fairly reckoned a 
child of the town, they congratulated their townsmen that even the 
inability of such men as are here named to aid us, did not seriously 
interfere to prevent the proper celebration of the day. Not many towns 
of the small population of Sheffield have such men among their sons, 
and far fewer tonus could have found other sons who could so worthily 
fill the places thus made vacant. Our most hearty thanks are due and 
are extended to the Rev. Orville Dewey, D. D. ; the Rev. Charles M. 
Hyde, D. D., of Haverhill; Prof. George F. Root, Doc. of Music, of 
Chicago j General John G. Barnard, XL S. Army ; the Hon. Abram H. 
Dailey, of Brooklyn ; and Mr. George A. Hoadley, of Argyle, N. Y., for 
their presence and their labors in our behalf. In this connection, also, 
the name of Hon. Ensign H. Kellogg, of Pittsfield, should be mentioned, 
who, though prevented by his appointment by the United States govern- 
ment, as Commissioner under the Treaty of Washington, from filling a 
more prominent place upon the programme of the occasion, was present, 
and whose unique extemporaneous address was so greatly enjoyed. 

The committee chose Rev. Orville Dewey, D. D., against his protest, 
president of the day. The chief marshal and the musical director were 
invited to be present, and to act, also, by the committee. A public 
meeting was held June 3, of which Mr. Zacheus Candee was moderator, 
and at which the necessary committees were chosen. The list of officers 
is as follows : — 

President, Orville Dewey, D. D. 

Secretary and Treasurer, Eev. Mason Noble, Jr. 

Music Director, George F. Root, Doc. Mus. 

Music Committee, Hon. James Bradford, Frank Roys, William L. Abbott, Win. 
H. Little, George B. Lee. 

Marshal, Graham A. Root. 

Assist. Marshals, S. Hopkins Bushnell, Hopkins T. Candee. 

Ushers, Alfred H. Hoadley, Henry C. Clark, Levi H. Boardman, John Taft, 
Edward M. Holmes, Frank Smith. 

Literary Committee, Miss Mary E. Dewey, Mrs. Henry H. Smith, Mrs. Mason 
Noble, Jr., Miss Eliza Sage, Miss Caroline H. Bradford, Miss Jenny M. Burr, Mrs. 
Benj. F. Phillips. 

COMMITTEE ON FINANCE. 
Harvey Roys, D wight Boardman, 

Roscoe C. Taft, L. Milton Merrifield, 

Horace R. Bronson, T. G. Worthy, 

Henry H. Hoadley, Charles Fretts, 

Horace Z. Candee, Eugene J. Vosburg. 



Henry Dutcher, 
John D. Burtch, 
Alvin Callender, 
Heman Callender, 
Charles O. Dewey, 
Cyrus French, 



COMMITTEE ON HOSPITALITY. 

Seth Lee, 
Ralph Little, 
George Landon, 
George Shears, 
Henry Suydam. 



COMMITTEE ON THE EVENING RECEPTION. 
Horace D. Train, M. D., Ralston P. Little, 

Charles Brown, Theodore F. Miner, 

Joseph W. Caudee, Charles Munn, 

Frank P. Gleason, Robert L. Taft, 

George Kellogg, M. John Smith. 



COMMITTEE 

Leonard Tuttle, 
Mrs. Birdsey N. Burtch, 
Mrs. Frank Curtiss, 
Mrs. Henry Dutcher, 
Mrs. Ann P. Hamlin, 
Mrs. Lewis S. Parsons, 
Edward D. Andrus, 
Frank O. Andrus, 
Myron W. Andrus, 
George Bartholomew, 
John M. Benjamin, 
Charles K. Brown, 
George R. Cook, 



ON THE GROUNDS. 

Frank Crippen, 
Albert W. Curtiss, 
Lawrence Hess, 
Henry Hudson, 
Asahel M. Little, 
John N- Munson, 
George D. Noble, 
James Roraback, 
Charles Spurr, 
Orrin Taft, 
Jairus N. Warner, 
Luther Winch, 
William Wilcox. 



COMMITTEE 
Mrs. R. D wight Andrews, 
Miss Julia Abbott, 
Mrs. Willis Bartholomew, 
Mrs. Horace Z. Candee, 
Mrs. Hopkins T. Candee, 
Miss Bessie H. Cooper, 
Miss Emma Clark, 
Mrs. Frank Chapin, 
Miss Annie Chappell, 
Mrs. Wright Crippen, 
Miss May Canfield, 
Miss Louise Dewey, 
Miss Helen Field, 
Miss Minnie Forbes, 
Miss Martha French, 
Mrs. Grove D. Griffith, 
Miss Martha Hubbell, 
Mrs. John L. Hugins, 
Miss Nellie Kellogg, 
Miss Lucy Kellogg, 



ON FLORAL DECORATION. 

Miss Mary R. Leonard, 
Mrs. Ralston F. Little, 
Miss Mary Little, 
Miss Nellie Little, 
Miss Gertrude McMurray, 
Mrs. Frank Noble, 
Miss Lucia Peck, 
Miss Kate Peck, 
Mrs. L. Asher Robinson, 
Miss Alice Sage, 
Miss Lizzie Sage, 
Miss Emma Stevens, 
Miss Fannie Taft, 
Mrs. Robt. L. Taft, 
Miss Electa Tuttle, 
Miss Lettie Tripp, 
Miss Miriam Train, 
Miss Libbie Warner, 
Miss Ella Wilcox, 
Miss Lilian Wickwire."' 



COMMITTEE ON THE COLLATION. 

Mrs. Lucius Little, Mrs. Joel H. Field, 

Mrs. John Bacon, Mrs. William S. Ferris, 

Mrs. Levi Boar dm an, Mrs. George Gorham, 

Mrs. Edmund Boardman, Mrs. A. Frank Hubbard, 

Mrs. Bella N. Clark, Mrs. George Kirby, 

Mrs. Harve}' Chapin, Mrs. Alonzo R. Hurlburt, 

Mrs. Mary A Cowles, Mrs. Albert Leroy, 

Mrs. Marcellus Chapin, Mrs. Stephen R. Miller, 

Mrs. Adaline H. Cook, Mrs. John Pease, 

Mrs. Henry Coon, Mrs. Harvey Roys, 

Mrs. Albert W. Curtiss, Mrs. Andrew J. Rider, 

Mrs. Orrin Curtiss, Mrs. Stephen B. Sardam, 

Mrs. Zacheus Candee, Miss Olive Saxton, 

Mrs. Orrin Clark, Mrs. Horace D. Train, 

Mrs. Joseph G. Canfield, Mrs. James Van Deusen, 

Mrs. Henry B. Chapin, Mrs. E. J. Vosburg, 

Mrs. Charles O. Dewey, Mrs. Wm. Warner, 

Mrs. James N. Dickson, Mrs. Theodore C. Wickwire. 
Mrs. Luther Winch, 

How well these committees performed their duties, the perfect success 
of the celebration in every particular told. It would be invidious to 
mention the special labors of individuals, but it would be unjust not to 
allude to the continuous hard work so cheerfully done by the ladies and 
gentlemen who arranged and distributed the collation at the Hall — the 
weather having disarranged all their plans — and also to the efficiency 
and ability shown by Mrs. Eliza Curtiss (whose name is not mentioned 
above), who assisted in the decoration of the church, and to the willing 
id rendered by Mr. and Mrs. S. H. Bushnell and Mr. M. J. Smith in 
the same work. 

The list of committees is here given exactly as it was then made out, 
except that the names of Harvey Roys and Miss Annie Ohappell are 
substituted for those of Abner Roys and Mrs. A. M. Little, according to 
an arrangement made between themselves. Some of these persons were 
unable or declined to serve, and some were, as always, more abundant in 
labors than others. But it is not thought best to attempt to revise the 
lists. No one was given authority to do so, and to correct them properly 
would be to add to them, until almost a directory of the town was made 
out. 



THE PEOCEEDINGS. 



Sunday, June 18, 1876. 

It was one of those "rare days of June." The congregation gathered 
early, and soon filled the old church, seats, aisles, galleries, and vesti- 
bule ; in all its hundred and sixteen years the old building has, probably, 
never sheltered so many persons in one day. "The appearance of the 
church in its floral decorations was charming to every beholder. Much 
credit is due to the floral committee, and to Mrs. Andrews especially, 
who superintended the work of decoration. Festoons of evergreens en- 
circled the church, falling gracefully between each cluster of lamps, over 
which flags were placed, adding much to the beauty of the whole. Be- 
tween the higher windows handsome wreaths were suspended ; high up 
and behind the pulpit a fine portrait of Washington was placed, 
surrounded by flags of the Union, which owes so much to him, the Father 
of our Country. The pulpit was handsomely decorated with flowers ; on 
the front hung a wreath, and just below, two stars in red, white and blue 
flowers; at each side of the desk were the dates, 1776-1876, all made 
in flowers, and very ingeniously constructed, while on the table below 
rested a beautiful harp of flowers. Fifty vases of flowers were placed 
in various parts of the church, and fragrance and beauty were every- 
where found. The organ was removed from the gallery for this occasion, 
and placed on the right of the pulpit, the choir facing the congregation, 
Dr. Geo. F. Root presiding at the organ." 

— Connecticut Western News, for July 23, 1876. 

The service began with a Prayer of Invocation, offered by Rev. Mason 
Noble, Jr., the pastor of the church. 

The choir then sang the anthem (arranged by Prof. Root), " Let the 
people praise Thee, God ! let ALL THE PEOPLE praise Thee. 0, 
let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for Thou shalt judge the people 



10 

righteously, and govern the nations upon earth. Let the people praise 
Thee, God ! let ALL THE PEOPLE praise Thee." 

The whole congregation rose, and joined in singing the long metre 
Doxology, and the hymn written for the occasion by Mrs. Luella 
Dowd Smith : — 



HYMN. 
i. 

Where once men spoke with fear and dread, 
We welcome you with joy to-day; 

The sunshine breaks upon our head, 
The clouds of war have passed away. 

II. 

That we might reap these brighter days, 
Our fathers sowed with toil and tears ; 

We speak their name with thankful praise, 
And bless them for these hundred years. 

III. 

May we but live our lives as well — 

Devoted to the true and free ; 
Another hundred years shall tell 

How we have prized our liberty. 

IV. 

God bless our land ! fair freedom's land ! 

Protect her from all ways of guile ; 
Teach her by night to trust Thy hand, 

Teach her by day to seek Thy smile. 



The following letter was read : — 

New York, April 25, 1876. 
Rev. Mason Noble, Jr., Sec, etc. 

Dear Sir : — Your favor of the 6th inst. came to my residence in 
my absence. 

I am compelled to decline your courteous invitation to attend the cen- 
tennial celebration of my native town on the 18th of next June, and take 
part in the services. The Quadrennial or General Conference of my 
Church holds its session next month, and my official duties, during and 
immediately subsequent to its session, will render it very difficult, if not 
impracticable, to comply with your request. My family is so greatly 



11 

afflicted that my leaving them would be of questionable propriety, and 
mv own health is so poor at this time that I cannot take any public 
service which I do not feel to be an imperative duty. I regret very 
deeply my inability to be with you on that patriotic and most interesting 
occasion. 

I glory in my geographical birthright. I have always been proud 
of my native town, of my native country, and of my native State. No 
commonwealth in the grand galaxy of the States has done more for 
itself, for the Republic, and for mankind, than has Massachusetts. 

If Sheffield is not the best town in the State, it is to me the dearest 
one. 

I shall be with you in spirit during your celebration, and shall pray 
that the exercises of the occasion may strengthen the patriotic and relig- 
ious sentiments of the people. 

Very truly yours, 

Edmund S. Janes. 



A passage from the Bible was read by the Rev. Philip Germond, Pastor 
of the Methodist Episcopal Church. 

Prayer was offered by the Rev. Charles M. Hyde, D. D. 

The anthem, "Praise waiteth for Thee, God, in Zion," was sung 
by the choir, and choir and congregation united in the familiar hymn, 

" Praise to Thee, Thou great Creator." 

The sermon (given hereafter in full) was then preached by the Rev. 
Orville Dewey, D. D. 

Dr. Dewey led the congregation in prayer. 

The choir sang the anthem, " The Lord reigneth, He is clothed in 
majesty," and the congregation joined with them in the hymn, 

" Come, sound His praise abroad;" 

and the morning service was closed with the Benediction, pronounced by 
Dr. Dewey. 



The afternoon service was, perhaps, not so densely crowded, but the 
congregation was hardly perceptibly smaller. 

The service began with the reading of Scripture by the Rev. Mr. Noble. 

The choir sang the anthem, " Let evetything that hath breath praise 
the Lord," and all united in the hymn, 

" Ye tribes of Adam join." 



12 

Prayer was offered by the Rev. Mr. Germond. 

The anthem, " All power is given unto Me," and the hymn, " All hail 
the power of Jesus' name," were sung'. 

Rev. Charles M. Hyde, D. D., then preached the Sermon (printed in 
full in this volume), and led in prayer. 

The choir sang the anthem, " The Lord bless thee, and keep thee," 
and the congregation united with them in singing, 

" Lord, dismiss us with Thy blessing," 

and the Benediction was pronounced by Dr. Hyde. 



The evening service was one of praise, prayer and conference, con- 
ducted by Mr. Noble, according to a programme arranged by himself 
and Prof. Root. It consisted of congregational, choir, quartette and solo 
singing, Scripture reading, Scripture reading with responses by the 
choir and congregation, prayers, and remarks. Prayers were offered by 
Rev. Norman Kellogg, of Sheffield ; Rev. Stephen Bush, of Waterford, 
N. Y. ; Mr. Levi Warner, of New York ; and Mr. Robbins Burrell, of 
Sheffield, Ohio j and brief remarks were made by Mr. Noble, Mr. Warner, 
Prof. Root, Rev. Dr. Hyde, and Rev. Mr. Bush. The Benediction was 
pronounced by Rev. S. P. Parker, D. D., Rector of the Episcopal 
Church, Sheffield. 



Monday, June 19. 

Commenced with copious rain. All the morning the rain was poured 
upon the thirsty earth. It was greatly needed by the fields, and was 
thankfully received by our farmers ; but it necessitated a total change 
in the prearranged order of exercises. Instead of the out-of-door gather- 
ing for which we had planned, it was necessary to continue all the 
exercises at the old church, and the procession w r e were obliged to omit. 

Notwithstanding the rain, the church was filled to its utmost capacity 
before the exercises of the day commenced with music by the Stockbridge 
Cornet Band. 

Rev. Orville Dewey, D. D., President of the day, presided, and 
introduced General John G. Barnard, who read the address upon Local 
History, published herewith. 

The address was followed by singing, by the united choirs of the town, 
of a song, the words and music of which were written by Prof. Geo. F. 
Root, in view of this occasion, and which was, at this time, first sung in 
public. The solo was sung by Prof. G. W. Stevens, of Watertown, New 
York. It is to be regretted that we cannot give the music here. The 
words are as follows : — 



13 

DAY OF COLUMBIA'S GLOBY! 



CHORUS. — Day of Columbia's glory ! 

Crown of a hundred years ! 
Now we may tell the story, 

Now, for the whole world hears ! 
Yes, from the old, mighty nations, 

Ring out, in honor of thee, 
Welcomes and congratulations, 

Birthday of Liberty ! 
Ring out in 
Welcomes and congratulations, 

Birthday of Liberty ! 

SOLO. — Far down through the years of the century gone, 

When the young star of Freedom burned dim and alone, 
Twas this day, to the heart of the patriot so dear, 
That revived dying hope, that repressed rising ffiar. 

CHORUS. — Welcomes and congratulations, 
Birthday of Liberty ! 

SOLO. — The day that renewed the recorded decree, 

" This land we declare Independent and Free," 
And the long years rolled on, the clouds passed away, 
And Heaven's light now gilds our Centennial Day ! 
CHORUS. — Day of Columbia's glory ! 

Crown of a hundred years ! 
Tell once again thy story ! 

Tell, for the whole world hears ! 
Hark ! how the glad salutations 
Ring o'er the land and the sea, 
Peace and good-will from the nations, 
Columbia, beloved, to thee ! 

Columbia ! Columbia ! 
Columbia beloved, to thee ! 
Hear the glad salutations, 
Peace and good-will from the nations, 
Columbia, beloved, to thee ! 

Hon. Abram H. Dailey, of Brooklyn, was then introduced. His 
address is printed in this volume. 

After music by the band, all those present, not residents of Sheffield, 
were invited to adjourn to the Town Hall, and partake of a collation. 
Then occurred our only opportunity to estimate the numbers present, but 
the estimate is, at best, a rough one. The Hall will seat considerably 
more than three hundred, and was filled three successive times. Quite a 
number of residents in the outskirts of the town, however, accompanied 
their guests to the Hall, and quite a number of visitors from abroad 



14 

accompanied their hosts to their homes in the village. The ladies of 
Sheffield proved themselves fully equal to all demands made upon their 
hospitality, and from the Hall bushels of untouched provisions were 
returned to the donors, or given to the poor. To those ladies and gentle- 
men who cheerfully banished themselves from attendance upon the exer- 
cises of the day, that they might do the necessary work at the Hall, the 
thanks of their fellow-citizens are due. m 

After an intermission of an hour and a-half, the audience was again 
called together at the church, by the music of the band. 

Mr. George A. Hoadley, of Argyle, N. Y., was then introduced, and 
delivered the oration printed herewith. 

Following the oration, a Centennial song — music by General Barnard — 
was sung by a quartette, consisting of Misses Addie and Minnie Field, 
and Messrs. A. R. Hurlburt and Robert Cone. 

The words, composed by an accomplished Sheffield lady (adapted to 
music previously composed), are as follows, remarking that it was con- 
templated that the gathering should have been under the " old trees " of 
the Pine Grove, adjacent to the village : — 

SHEFFIELD CENTENNIAL SONG. 



Summer is here, 
Breezes blow soft, 
Birds fly aloft ; 
Happy are we ! 
Merry our cheer 
On this bright day, 
Singing away 
Beneath the pine tree. 
Here we have come, 
From far and near, 
This Centennial year ; 
Happy are we ! 
Sheffield's our home 
And at her call 
We meet friends all, 
Beneath the pine tree. 



In days of old, 

Strong for the right, 
Our sires did unite, 
So made us free. 
Let us then hold 
Sacred the gift, 
And our hearts lift 
Beneath the pine tree. 
Here we have come, 
From far and near, 
This Centennial year; 
Happy are we ! 
Sheffield's our home, 
And at her call, 
We meet friends all, 
Beneath the pine tree. 



« CHORUS. — Sheffield's our home, 
Ring out the song 
Cheerful and strong 
Beneath the pine tree, 
The old tree, the old tree, 
The jolly old tree, 
King out the song around the pine tree. 



15 

The account of the further exercises of the day is taken almost verbatim 
from the Berkshire Courier, of June 21, the editor of which paper was 
present, and published a report of the celebration from notes taken on 
the spot. 

Mr. Stevens sang a solo, " Two Hundred Years Ago," which was ap- 
plauded to the echo, and only by reason of hoarseness was he allowed to 
be excused from responding to the encore. After more enlivening music 
by the band, the venerable chairman, Dr. Dewey, said : The assembly is to 
celebrate a remarkable town meeting, and that this celebration is a cer- 
tain sort of town meeting itself, and he proposed the participants should 
exercise the rights and privileges of such meetings to speak if they desire, 
or not, as they chose. He also recognized the right of the presiding 
officer of a town meeting to call out such speakers as he may desire to 
hear from. Many a man would prefer to pay the stamp tax our fore- 
fathers made so much objection to, than to get up and speak in public. 
But that nobody should have occasion to say they did not have oppor- 
tunity, he would call upon nobody — or rather upon everybody — to 
speak. 

Dr. Peck, who was moderator of the town meeting at the outbreak of 
the rebellion, in 1861, said, only two men voted against giving money for 
war purposes. (A singular coincidence, as the record shows that two men 
voted against the resolution passed June 18, 1776.) Norman T. Leonard, 
of Westfield, corrected the historical statement, relative to the religious 
societies of the town. (Mentioning the fact of the early organizations of 
an Episcopal Society, which soon became extinct.) He recalled a " peace 
meeting," when peace was declared — in the last war with Great Britain, 
we believe — when one man, of peaceful proclivities, said : " Peace ! and 
he who does not want peace, ought to be rammed into yonder cannon, 
for wadding ! " He thought it was time for peace in our country now. 
Alluding to a statement in one of the addresses touching the abolition of 
slavery, Mr. Leonard said : "In the presence of that open Bible, when 
the Southern men say they did right in holding their servants as slaves, 
it is not in my heart to differ with them." 

By special request of the chainnan, Dr. Dewey, made at the suggestion 
of the " Literary Committee," Harry Hillyer Brigham, a lad of about 
a dozen years, a son of the late Wm. Brigham, and great-grandson of 
Gen. John Ashley, one of the first settlers of the town of Sheffield, and 
from whom the village of Ashley Falls took its name, spoke a centennial 
piece, which was very finely rendered, with clear voice, perfect enuncia- 
tion, and graceful gestures. 

Ensign H. Kellogg, of Pittsfield, next made a speech that was the spice 
and seasoning of the entire literary feast. It was full of anecdotes and 
personal memories of the old-time folks of Sheffield. He said : As a son 



16 

of the grand old town, he could not fail to express his enjoyment in the 
celebration, which, as lie expected, would be characteristic of the generous 
hospitality of the town. Not many towns in the State have such a record 
as that expressed by the vote of one hundred years ago, and it was well 
to rejoice over it. He recalled the old edifice, as it appeared in his boy- 
hood days, with its high-backed seats, in which he could hardly see the 
minister, and could not see the girls at all. He always thought that was 
the reason why they changed the style of seats. How well he remem- 
bered the girls of those days, but could not name them, for matrimony 
had played havoc with their names. He used to think that Col. Fred. Root 
— and a grand old fellow he was — when he used to march into the 
church, and take his seat as leader of the choir, and take up the pitch- 
pipe, was the biggest man in the world. Training-day called up a 
myriad of reminiscences of the sports the boys had at those times. He 
told of the " stint" the boys must first accomplish, to attend the election 
parade, and of the beans they planted in a woodchuck's hole to gain time. 
It was a great thing to see Gen. Whiting ride down from Great 
Barrington on his spirited horse, as Inspector-General, arrayed in all 
the glory of buff, and all the blazonry of brass buttons. Darby, the 
"Guinea nigger," was also recalled; how he used to relate his being brought 
a slave from Africa. Darby was an.artistic agriculturist. He would plant 
a field of corn, put beans beside the hills, plant potatoes between the hills, 
and then sow the whole field to buckwheat. When the corn came up, 
he used to pull out the largest sprouts to give the little ones a chance to 
grow. One by one he called up the " characters " of forty-five years ago, 
and kept the audience in good humor for over an hour with the amusing 
reminiscences.* 

* In answer _to our request to put in writing the substance of his remarks, Mr. 
Kellogg makes the following reply. 

While regretting that it should be so, it must be admitted that to " write it out'' as 
'twas spoken, would be like attempting to catch the effervescence of the champagne 
goblet, or to fix the hues of the rainbow : — 

Pittsfield, Mass.. Aug. 19th, 1876. 
My Dear Sir :— 

Since I received your recent letter, I have been looking at the matter of 
writing out what [ said at the Centennial Celebration. I find it was of so desultory 
and conversational a character that I cannot give it as 'twas spoken, and the print 
would lose what little interest the original talk gave. I must, therefore, abandon the 
attempt. I hope I have not delayed the progress of the pamphlet. 

Yours very truly, 

E. H. Kellogg. 
Rev. Mason Noble. 



17 

Rev. Mr. Bush, of Waterford, N. Y., made a few remarks, as did also 
Hon. J. Z. G-oodrich, of Stockbridge, and Wm. Root, of Sheffield. Ohio. 

The day proved too short for our exercises, and when, because of the 
lateness of the hour, the "meeting" was compelled to adjourn, Hon. 
James Bradford, Wm. G. Bates, Esq., Rev. N. Kellogg, Hon. 0. D. 
Day, and A. T. Roraback, Esq., of those invited by the committee, had 
not spoken, and a poem, written for the occasion by Mrs. B. F. Philips, 
at the invitation of the " Literary Committee," was unread. Many others 
were present, children or grandchildren of the town, from whom we 
would have gladly heard, but time was inexorable, and they and we must 
wait patiently until our next Centennial gathering. 



THE EVENING BECEPTION, 



In the evening the Town Hall was filled with ladies and gentlemen, 
some of whom were dressed in y e ancient costumes of the land. One 
especially beautiful dress of solid brocade was sent from England 130 
years ago, and was the wedding dress of Gen. John Ashley's wife, in 
1769. It was worn Monday evening by a great-granddaughter of the 
bride, Mrs. Hamlin, of New York. There was a calash that was worn 
80 years ago bj^ Sheriff Root's grandmother, and many jewels, and other 
articles of old times. A musket was exhibited (by Dea. C. D. Sage) that 
was used at Bunker Hill. The evening reception was a grand success, 
and lasted into the " wee sma' hours." 



18 



SERMON BY THE REV. DR. DEWEY. 



" Kemeraber the days of old." — Deuteronomy, xxxii, 7. 

"We turn aside from our usual religious meditations to-day, to remem- 
ber the days of old ; days in which we are interested not only as the 
people of this town, but which appeal to the wider sentiment of patriot- 
ism and love of country. But let us not think that we leave religion 
when we do so, least of all our Bible religion. This love of country, 
this feeling called patriotism, breathes through many a passage of our 
sacred Scriptures : in the writings of the old Hebrew time, in the recalling 
of its early records so frequent in the Psalms and Prophets, in the solemn 
adjuration, "If I forget thee, Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her 
cunning;" in that outburst of tender affection from the heart of Christ, 
when he said, " O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered 
thee, even as a hen gathereth her brood under her wings ! " Of such tender- 
ness of patriotic feelings. I know no other record. 

And well that it should be so. Our country is the home of our earthly 
existence ; of all its affections, of all its ties of kindred and friendship, 
of all its joys and sorrows, of all its prospects and hopes. No soil on 
earth is like the natal soil, no fields are like those where our childhood 
has played, and our manhood labored ; no ground as holy as that where 
we took our birth, and which shall hold our sleeping dust j where our 
children were born, and shall live after us. 

Thus the fortunes of successive generations are woven together in that 
bond which we call our country, and nothing, in its future or its past, 
can be indifferent to us, till we are indifferent to ourselves. If we have 
a country ; if there is here no such orphan of all nations as he who has 
no country ; if there have been trials and vicissitudes and struggles in 
the days of old ; if we have had ancestors wlio bravely met them, and 
deserve to be remembered, it is meet that we remember them now, and 
especially on this day. For on this day it was, the 18th of June, one 
hundred years ago, that our fathers in Sheffield stood up, in town meet- 
ing assembled, and passed the Resolve, — to state it in terms drawn from 
the Town Records, — that, " if the Continental Congress, in their wisdom, 
think prudent and for the interest and safety of the American Colonies, to 



19 

declare the said Colonies independent of the kingdom of Great Britain, 
the inhabitants of this town will solemnly engage, with their lives and 
fortunes, to support them in their measure." — Voted in the affirmative : it 
is added, " Two dissenters only." 

This Resolution shows, in a pretty decisive manner, of what stock the 
people were. It was the Puritan stock. That town-meeting Resolve told 
of a lineage from men who, in England, a century earlier, stood up for 
civil liberty, and of those pilgrims from their country who chose that hard 
lot of exile, rather than submission to arbitrary power. It was from this 
that they fled who built the first homes in New England — English 
fugitives from oppression — not only the original pilgrim band that came 
to Plymouth, but those who followed them, and settled along the eastern 
coast; and it is their descendants who spread themselves over the 
valleys of the Connecticut and Housatonic. One of the first settlers of 
this town, who, with a company of associates, bought from the Indians 
the tract of land which now is Sheffield and Great Barrington, came by 
known and direct descent from a family that settled in Dorchester in 
1633, only thirteen years after the landing in Plymouth. 

No one, therefore, can trace our history, without giving a prominent 
place to the men of Plymouth and their successors. Let me, then, go 
back, and say a few words of them, in the first place. 

What an enterprise was theirs ! What an emigration not seen in the 
world since that, and with what trials and sacrifices was it carried out ! 
It is good for their children to consider how, and why, and in what 
spirit they came. They came, not as the followers of Columbus to His- 
paniola did, to seek for gold ; not to find a home of ease and indulgence 
on some favored shore. They came to find rest for their souls, a refuge 
from persecution ; a place for the free exercise of their religion and their 
conscience. And though they were fleeing from oppression and persecution, 
it was not in the spirit of anger, but of sorrow. Nothing can be more 
touching than the language of Francis Higginson, as he stood upon the 
parting deck, when the shore of his native land was fading from his 
sight. Lifting his hands, not in cursing, but in love and blessing, he 
said: "We will not say. as the old sectaries said, Farewell, Rome, fare- 
well, Babylon; but, Farewell, dear England, and all the friends and 
brethren there." And they came, moreover, these men, not as mere 
roaming adventurers, for themselves alone, but for their children, for 
their posterity. Nothing was more remarkable in them than the spirit 
of self-sacrifice. The first sermon that was printed in this country 
(or in England for them — I do not know which), Robert Cushman's 
Sermon, had this for its text : " Let no man seek his own, but every man 
another's wealth," or welfare. Ay, that was a text to be delivered to 
this pilgrim company, one year after their arrival ! delivered amidst 



20 

hardships, and sufferings, and sacrifices, that might seem to have gone far 
enough in that direction already. 

And the whole sermon breathes the sentiment, nay, the language 
which I often find in their annals, — the noble language which was stereo- 
typed in their mouths, and not only so, but imprinted upon their hearts, 
that they were willing, — this was what they said, — that they "were 
willing to throw away their lives, ay, to sink in the sands of that inhos- 
pitable coast, if they might be but stepping-stones for them that should 
come after." It was no common hardihood, at the start, that led a small 
band of men to launch their frail bark upon a seldom traversed sea, for 
an unknown shore. That bark was freighted with the fortunes of unborn 
millions. Other vessels followed in its track and brought the germs 
of other like-minded communities, which soon lined the coast with rising 
towns, that in process of time sent forth families and companies which 
settled New England; and at length, New England settled and per- 
meated the great West. It has carried with it its intelligence, its religion, 
its free schools, its churches, and planted them in the valley of the 
Mississippi. Some dim vision of this may have risen before the mind 
of those brave and far-seeing exiles, who left their native land to 
try what a new home and a new world might do for them and their 
descendants. But how far beyond all human probability at the time 
has been the fulfilment of their prophetic hope ! Yes, at the time, 
not the prophecy of John, on the barren shore of Patmos, but with the 
shining isles of the ^Egean Sea, and the neighborhood of nations all 
around him, was in circumstances half so full of dread and desolation. 
Bring up, if you can, the scene of their arrival before you. Look at that 
small and shattered vessel, not entering a thronged port, not surrounded 
by friendly sails, but alone ; the only moving object that you can see, 
amidst the boundlessness of sky and waters. 

What shore is it that she approaches, timidly seeking some inlet where 
her weary company may land — darkened by primeval forests, clouded by 
winter storms ? Look at those sea-worn voyagers, as they crowd the 
frozen deck, vainly stretching their eyes to pierce the secrets of a world 
to them all mystery ; the sea they had escaped on the one hand, and the 
wilderness they must encounter on the other. 

The ocean eagle soared 

From his nest, by the white waves' foam, 

And the rocking pines of the forest roared : 
This was their welcome home. 

Home ! Ay, home call it — though it is there that the burial-place of 
more than half of that sad company, swept off in a year, still lifts its mourn- 
ful brow above the waters. Ay, home call it : the home it was of those 



21 

great hearts — all the home they had ; but dear to them — dearer than 
Cashmere or Araby the Blest — because it was the rock-bound shelter and 
resting-place of freedom. Yes, there lived, as it were, but a winter's day, . 
the great progenitors of popular education, unshackled religion, and civil 
liberty, through a long line of ages. 

I have thus eudeavored to carry you back to our ancestors, the first 
settlers of New England, because their character has the most immediate 
bearing upon the event which we are assembled to commemorate. An 
event, I call it, though it was no great battle ; no great action for history 
to commemorate ; but, occurring among our fathers, it is of such interest 
to us that we think that we can do nothing less than to mark and note 
it, and take account of it as we do. 

Our fathers, I say, and who were they ? Not far from us ; they were 
the grandfathers of some among us. There are family ties between us 
and them. Blood of our blood beat in their veins. They were men with 
affections like our ow r n ; with interests, with cares, and anxieties, for one 
another, for their children, for all their earthly welfare ; such as we feel 
to-day. And with all this in their minds and hearts, they solemnly 
resolved, in town-meeting assembled — not waiting to be called upon, 
they volunteered — the resolve to take up arms for the common cause, when 
occasion should call for it. 

The significance of that event, it is true, is not confined to us. All over 
New England the same spirit prevailed ; and in many places, as from 
here, men were mustered to be sent, and were sent, to join Washington's 
army, in Cambridge. Yes, the war of the Revolution was already 
begun ; blood had been shed at Lexington, and Concord, and Bunker 
Hill ; a British army had occupied Boston. 

All this was before the eyes of the men of Sheffield, when they devoted 
their lives and fortunes, in solemn pledge, to the common cause. We 
are apt to see things, and especially events in history, in the abstract ; 
we hear of things that are done far away from us, in time or place, but, 
having no personal part in them, they do not come home to us, and we 
do not know them. Their " lives and fortunes," these men said. It was 
the language of the day — of a now by-gone day. It passes over our minds, 
perhaps, as mere language ; and we do not understand what it meant. 
But it was life, indeed, and life's fortunes, that were staked on that issue. 
Oh ! that call to arms ! — ever must it strike deep and fearfully into the 
heart of any community— that call which summons fathers, sons, brothers, 
friends, lovers, to the bloody fight, there, perhaps, to die for their country. 
We have ourselves known what that call is, and how it was met. We 
know how it stirred every drop of patriotic blood to meet it. Bonaparte is 
reported to have said : "The conscription " — i. e., the summoning and com- 
pelling a part of the people — one, perhaps, out of every family — to go into 



22 

the army, — " the conscription," he said, " is the everlasting root of a 
nation." I do not know, certainly, what he meant by that. It may have 
. been a mere military dictum of the great captain ; his way of saying- that 
no nation can stand and last, unless it constantly arms for war. But I 
conceive that his thought may have gone deeper. It may have been that 
this constant call of a nation to arms — this taking of one from every 
family, to stand ready and prepared to put his life in peril for his country 
— tested and tried every heart in society, as nothing else could, and thus 
appealed to that courage, and manliness, and self-consecration, without 
which a nation can not stand, or grow, or prosper, or live. 

That appeal the fathers of New England were prepared to meet. And 
what prepared them for it f Remember that no order of the government 
enrolled them for the conflict; no forced conscription, but their own 
free resolve. And, again, it was not mere military invasion that they 
resolved to withstand ; but the invasion of their rights ; the arrogance of 
power ; unlawful taxation ; the imposition of customs and of laws, without 
their consenting or being consulted. It was a case of such manifest 
wrong, that some of the noblest men in England — as Burke and Chatham 
— took their part, and spoke nobly of the justice of their cause. 

But what, I repeat, prepared them to take the stand they did, for their 
rights and liberties? What but the spirit that was breathed into them by 
hereditary descent ? Suppose that they had come of a different stock ; 
suppose that Spain had colonized the rock-bound coast of New England ; 
that a company of selfish adventurers had come here, caring and seeking 
for nothing but gold ; ready to crush down to slavery, misery and death, 
all that stood in the way of their unholy greed ; caring for no rights but 
the right to plunder. No picture in history is more mournful than that — 
the Spanish invasions of Hispaniola, and Mexico, and Peru — the turning 
all of those fair regions into blood and desolation — the crushing down 
of the simple and innocent natives, by ten thousands, into slavery — 
wasting away their lives in the hard toil of mines, or sweeping them 
away in bloody and rulhless wars, like those of Vasco Nunez, and Cortez, 
and Pizarro, till scarcely any of them were left to tell the miserable story. 

Suppose, I say, that the first settlers of this country had been like them 
where, then, had been a people like our fathers, to stand up for the rights 
of man ? No, not Spanish, but English blood — blood like that of Hamp- 
den and Cromwell — beat in the hearts of our fathers' sires. From that 
came the spirit which would not submit to oppression ; which was ready 
to take up arms against the strongest power in the world, in defence of 
the right. 

Or suppose that Norsemen, people from the north of Europe, had come 
here, as they might have come, did come, centuries before ; suppose that, 
instead of the intelligence and devoted religion which the Mayflower and 



23 

its successors wafted to this shore, a wild and ignorant barbarism had been 
brought here, — where, then, had been the care for education that planted 
schools here, that, eighteen years after the landing at Plymouth, laid the 
foundation of Harvard College 1 Where had been the political culture 
that made laws ; that gathered the people into associated action for the 
common weal ; that organized our town-meetings — the primary schools of 
our free government ? " A people, when assembled in a town," says an 
eminent writer, " is far more formidable than when dispersed over a wide 
extent of country." Dispersed our people would have been, if they had 
been descendants of an uncultivated horde from Norway or Greenland. 
Then no such resolve would have been sent up to the Continental Congress, 
as that which went forth from Sheffield and other incorporated townships. 
They were Englishmen, I repeat, who came here, and they had among them 
a full measure of the culture of their native land. They were ready, 
and their children were ready, to stand up for their liberty, as their fathers 
had stood at Marston Moor, Dunbar, and Worcester. 

And war with them was not the end, as it would have been with 
roaming tribes, but the means ; the means of building up a free state ; of 
laying the foundations of education, law, and a sound civil polity. And 
their zeal, firmness, and decision, in the cause for which they took up 
arms, were such as became the children of the elder fathers of New 
England. 

What that spirit was in this town, is well evinced by an anecdote 
which I will take the liberty to relate to you. It was told me by a 
venerable officer in this church, whom some of you, perhaps, will remem- 
ber — Deacon Callender. It was what he witnessed when he was a boy, 
on the 4th of July, now a century ago. A liberty-tree had been set up 
here, as in many other places. The very night following, it was cut 
down. The news of this outrage spread through the town, and the next 
day the whole population came together, in a state of the utmost excite- 
ment and indignation, to see to this thing, and to find who had done it. 
At that time, as you well know, there was a class of men in New Eng- 
land, and in this whole country, who were called Tories, who stood 
aloof from the great popular movement ; who took the side of England, 
and counselled submission, rather than resistance, to her mandates. Many 
of them were persons of property and high social position. One such 
person was here, who had been for a considerable time a prosperous 
merchant, and from his known sentiments it took but little time to 
fasten the charge upon him, nor did he deny it. 

The question then was, what should be done with him, to avenge the 
insulted honor of the town, and of the liberty to which it was pledged. 
And this was the decision : that all the people should stand in two rows 
and that between them the offender should pass, and, taking off his hat to 



24 

every individual as he passed, should say, " I ask your pardon." " A.nd^" 
said my aged informant, " though I was but a little boy of ten years old, 
Dan Raymond took off his bat, and asked my pardon." And then, having 
ascertained who was the person that he had procured to cut down the 
liberty-tree, they dressed him in a coat of tar and feathers, put him upon 
a bareboned horse, and compelled him to ride through the whole street. 
and to stop at every house, and ask pardon for what he had done.* 

I have taken the liberty, justified, I hope, by the occasion, to give you 
this relation, because it shows, better than any terms of general statement 
could, what was the spirit of the fathers of this town of Sheffield. It is, 
next to the event which we celebrate to-day, the most remarkable fact in 
our Sheffield annals. That such a man as the principal offender should 
have been made to pass through that gauntlet of humiliation, shows that 
he saw a spirit in the people around him that was not to be trifled with. 
They could not fine him, nor put him in prison — there was probably no 
law for either — but that gauntlet they could make ; that singular amend 
they could exact, with a sort of grim entertainment mixed with their 
indignation ; and they did it. 

I have thus attempted to tell you something of the story of that elder 
time and conduct which we have met together to recall, and remember ; 
of the character, the spirit, and feeling, of the men who, one hundred years 
ago, stood up here to resist oppression and wrong ; and, with this view, I 
have gone back to the original settlers of the country, from whom they 
drew their birth and breeding. 

But why, on the whole, and briefly to sum up the matter, — why should 
we commemorate that action of the town, which we think it right to sig- 
nalize with religious services and discourses, and which we propose, more 
especially in secular fashion, to celebrate to-morrow ? Why shall we 
meet together and call upon our townsmen, residing in different places, to 
join us in this Centennial celebration ? 

Because it is fit and becoming thus to remember our fathers — fit 
toward them, and becoming for us. They who do not remember and 
revere their ancestors who have done worthy deeds, are not likely to leave 
• posterity that will be worthy of being remembered. It is, therefore. 



* Dan Raymond — his name was Dan. not Daniel — was for many years a man i I 
note and high standing in the town. His name first appears on the town records al 
the date of his marriage to Anne Noble, July 19, 1763. In 1770 he was chosen to a 
minor town office. In 1772 he was chosen constable. From the record one is com- 
pelled to conclude that the " Sheffield Tory " met with a change of heart, for, in 1780, 
lie was chosen assessor, and a member of the "committee to adjust town debts." and 
•• overseer of the work-house," and chairman of a committee to engage recruits foi 
the Continental army. Moreover, his third son. horn November 1st. 1783. was named 
George Washington Raymond. — [M. N, Jr.] 



25 

dbt only fit, but it concerns our own character, and the character of our 
children, that we should do it ; that we should thus take, and leave to 
our children, an impression which is good for us and for them. It is 
an advantage in aristocratic countries, that noble families, who have 
acted a distinguished part, should, in their permanence, carry down the 
recollection and incitement of high, historic virtues. We have no aristo- 
cracy. All the more reason is there that we, the whole people, should 
take care of these treasures of the olden time ; that we should take upon 
our hearts, and keep alive within them, the memory of our fathers' 
virtues. 

Not that we have anything extravagant to say of their merits. They 
were good men and true, who stood in their lot, and did the duty of the 
hour. And such a duty was it that I do not believe there was one low, 
mean, base person who said " Ay " to that manly resolve of a century ago. 
That " Ay," I have no doubt, was stoutly said. I have read an account, 
from a French traveller, of what he once witnessed in the Spanish Cortes, 
when a vote was taken, where every member of that body stood up, in 
peril of his life, and loudly proclaimed his decision. That action the 
writer commemorates as something very noble. There was no Cortes here, 
but a simple town-meeting, and I say that its decision was noble. 
And all the less distinguished it was — all the less parade and show there 
was about it, all the more reason there is why we should signalize and 
set it up for due honor. And if the thing then done, was done a century 
ago ; if nobody now living remembers the men who did it ; if only some 
of their names are known — and they evenaie passing away like shadows 
into the dimness of antiquity — let us do what we can to rescue them from 
oblivion. Let us say to one another, that we have had some good men 
and true in Sheffield ; good men, ay, and good citizens, who have left us 
the heritage of their example, — a heritage which it is our part not only 
to hold in sacred rememb ranee, but to cultivate and to improve ; to carry 
forward and to make better, every day, from this Centennial year, through 
the century to come. 

And for this special and final reason, let us do what we are doing iu 
these anniversary days, that we may take it upon our hearts as a heredi- 
tary pledge, faithfully, each one of us, to help build up in this land a 
society and government that shall be worthy to be called a great and 
example republic. All good men desire to see that — some happier 
condition of society, at least — a better world, justice, truth, purity, in rulers 
and people, all good men desire to see. The world is sighing for it. 
Sages, poets, philosophers, have dreamed of it. We, ourselves, alas ! 
are lamenting that it is yet so far from being realized here. We are 
grieving over the violation of public trusts, and our own share in it, as 
citizens and voters. A tone of sadness mingles with our Centennial 



26 

rejoicings. Cannot something better be done? Cannot we begin to do 
it, and go on doing it, from this day ? I will not exhort you to this, as 
preacher. Let me speak to you as dreamer, if you call me so — as a 
dreamer of dreams. Will not the time come for us better to understand 
what good citizenship is ? 

Yes, good citizenship ; citizenship under a representative government 
— something far more than it is under arbitrary rule ; far more than it is 
to keep the peace, to pay taxes, and obey the laws. Is it a baseless 
dream to hope that the time will come when a new view will be taken 
of our duties, as citizens of a free state ; when we, the people who made 
the government, shall feel it as a sacred bond upon us, to make it a good 
government ; when it shall no longer be a mere boast that we, the people, 
rale ; no longer a theme for flattering speeches of holiday orators, but a 
serious and deep conviction, that we must take the charge upon us, and 
see to it that we set up a righteous administration to rule over us ; that 
we thoughtfully deposit our votes in those ballot-boxes, which are the 
fountains of power; that we thoughtfully give our suffrages, not to mere 
partisan politicians, but to the wisest and best men in our choice ? 

And to go down deeper into our common life. As we stand at the head 
of a new era, as we look forward through a century to come, may we not 
hope for constant improvement in every way ; that there will be a rising 
intelligence ; that there will be a more watchful care over the schools ; 
that there will be provisions here for reading, and habits of reading and 
a good culture every way, which shall make happy firesides ; which shall 
make all gross and fiery stimulants unnecessary ; that there shall be a 
union of hearts and hands here, to make everybody happier, and, in fine, a 
raised tone of thought ; a force of public opinion here that shall cany every 
thing higher and higher 1 Can there not be such a thing as a pure, honest, 
truth-loving, instructed, and wise community, where men shall dwell to- 
gether as brethren ; where no man shall take unjust advantage of his 
neighbor ; where there shall be no false man, no fallen man, no slave of 
sense and passion ; where virtue and religion shall flourish together, bring- 
ing the earth time and the eternal time into accordance, into one great and 
happy life ; where love and purity shall come down from the holy heavens, 
and breathe through all affections of society ? Blessed society ! society of 
the beatitudes ! I shall not see it ; but the days, I trust, will come, 
when happier and better men shall see it — let us pray for that — the 
blessing, and gladness, and glory of coming generations. 



•27 



SERMON BY THE KEY CHARLES M. HYDE., D.D. 



"Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long 

UPON THE LAND WHICH THE LORD THY GOD GIVETH THEE." — Exodus XX, 2. 

The Providence of God has called us to His house to-day in fulfilment 
of a duty enjoined upon us by this word of God, " Honor thy father and 
thy mother.'' In connection with the public observance of Divine 
worship, while we " remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy," on this 
anniversary day we have special occasion to remember and honor also 
those to whose " house and lineage " we belong. 

We do not meet merely to perpetuate the memory of the event that 
stands recorded in the annals of this town one hundred years ago to-day. 
Job might maliciously wish that his " enemy had written a book," to be 
a perpetual monument of the shamefulness of wrong-doing : we are 
rightfully proud that for one hundred years the records of the town have 
preserved the remembrance of an honorable action, and for centuries to 
come will tell the story of humble devotion to a people's imperilled 
liberties. Nor do we meet to repeat the names of the men who partici- 
pated in the discussions and decision of the town-meeting held June 18, 
1776. That would be to most of us, who have never seen or known the 
men themselves, only a lesson in pronunciation and enumeration. We do 
not meet to make proclamation of sacrifices and services, ourselves 
uninterested, unmoved. The herald's trumpet gives to the reechoing air 
its noisy blare, but noise is neither fame nor worship. It is only as we 
reproduce and perpetuate the principles which controlled the action of 
that day, the spirit which lived and breathed in those fathers of this town 
that these memorial services will be of any value to us, or any honor to 
them. Thus shall we show higher regard for them than if we could 

" Engrave their names on every star that shiues, 
Or write their story on the bright blue sky, 
To be forever read by every eye." 

I do not propose to enter into any elaborate discussion of the principles 
which our fathers maintained, nor to give an}' exhaustive analysis of the 
spirit of independence that pervaded this community a century ago. But, 
reminding }'ou that Thomas Jefferson was imbued with his ardent patrio- 



2S 

tism by hearing Patrick Henry defending the dissenting ministers of 
Virginia, and that Patrick Henry himself had learned the true principles 
of human liberty from the preaching of Samuel Davies, may we not hope 
that some young hearts and minds among us to-day may be interested 
and profited by a succinct statement of some reasons we have for honoring 
our patriotic ancestry ? 

I. We honor our fathers, therefore, I remark in the first place, 
because they were the advocates and representatives of the true principles of 
constitutional government in Church and State. Not by man, nor of men, 
but by the direct revelations of Divine Providence did they receive the 
Gospel of political freedom. In the light that broke forth from God's 
Word, as they reverently trod the path of Providential duty, they learned 
not only what a Church of Christ ought to be, but also what are the rights 
and privileges of every Christian community. Not only did God " sift 
three nations that He might bring hither the finest of the wheat ; " but 
He also prepared here the soil for the reception of the seed, and His 
providences of sunshine and storm were the processes by which it was 
developed and matured. 

The Massachusetts Bay Company, under whose charter this region was 
opened to settlement, was originally a trading company, formed for 
purposes of commercial speculation. This trading company was, with- 
out any such original purpose, transformed under God's guiding hand 
into a civic brotherhood, strong in allegiance to right, formidable in its 
opposition to injustice. The English king apprehending no harm from the 
measure, those associated under the royal charter quietly transferred 
from England to this country their chartered privilege of holding annually 
a "General Court," or assembly of proprietors, for the election of a gov- 
ernor and assistants, and for the enactment of " laws not repugnant to the 
laws of England." Thus the colonists were trained from the very first to 
the exercise of self-government. While the clergy were studying questions 
of church polity, and settling articles of faith, the laity were investigating 
theories of government, and studying the principles of constitutional 
liberty. 

Our fathers despised not the wisdom nor the experience of the past. 
The leading spirits of the Revolutionary period of our national history were 
scholarly men. Aristotle and Plato were their teachers in science and 
philosophy. Cicero and Caesar were their instructors in the patriotism 
and valor of Rome. Luther and Calvin made them familiar with the 
elementary principles of the Christian faith, while, for practical applica- 
tions of truth to the conduct; of life, they could have no better models 
than such as English history afforded them. John Locke, and not the 
French doctrinaires, was in New England the accepted authority on 
questions of government. Our fathers profited by the study of these 



29 

writers, quite as much by avoiding their errors as by following their 
counsels. Treatises were written, and books on these questions of 
government were read, just as now the facts and theories of physical 
science furnish the topics for popular discussion and the books for special 
reading. In the Church, as well as the town-meeting, differences of 
opinion had arisen. These differences had been settled (so unreason- 
able and obstinate is human nature even here in New England) after 
years of jarring controversy. They had been settled, however, not by 
arbitrary authority, but by accordant recognition of the true principles 
involved. It is from precedent to precedent, each onward step based on 
some acknowledged truth, as well as warranted by some substantial 
advantage to be gained, that the liberties of our English-speaking 
people have broadened out into what we now find them to be in the 
institutions and usages of the constitutional monarchy of the mother 
country, and the constitutional republicanism of the United States. 

The very word Independence was, in its original use, an ecclesiastical 
term. It was introduced into the English language by writers on 
Church government. In advocating as part of the Christian system the 
independence of every local Church, the fathers of our New-England 
Congregationalism gave a new Avord to the English language, as well as 
a new idea to the world. Our churches prepared the way for the action 
of the Continental Congress that, in its session at Philadelphia, one 
hundred years ago on the fourth of July, declared its reasons for 
affirming that these colonies "are, and of right ought to be, free and 
independent States.'' Such brief review of our nation's history as I have 
given, shows us that Independence Day should properly be regarded as 
the completion of our period of youthful immaturity, rather than as the 
beginning of our national existence. We attained our majority at that 
time, and began on our own responsibility our national life, independent 
of the mother country. 

One other historical fact, connecting our Congregational Church polity 
with our national history, relates to the first suggestion of the union of 
the colonies. Rev. Jonathan Mayhew, of Boston, was invited to attend 
a council at Rutland. "Lord's day morning, June 8, 1766," he wrote a 
letter to James Otis. Alluding to the date, he remarks that it was " a 
good day for good thoughts," and goes on to say : " While thinking of the 
communion of churches, the great use and importance of the communion 
of colonies appeared to me in a strong light." Then he urges his cor- 
respondent to adopt some measures to carry out this idea. This was the 
first utterance, I believe, of the principle, " Liberty and Union," charac- 
teristic of our American institutions, State as well as Church. Out of this 
idea came the Committees of Correspondence, and the various measures 
taken, to organize some bond of fellowship between the different 



30 

townships and the different colonies. Through these committees, intel- 
ligence in regard to every new grievance, and the proposed measures 
of resistance, was communicated to every part of the country. 

Our fathers appreciated the importance of fullest opportunity for the 
freest formation and expression of correct public opinion. This must 
ever be the true governing power in society. We give expression to it 
in ways different from our fathers. The daily newspaper is the most, 
potent agency of our modern civilization in disseminating intelligence and 
inciting to action. Our Congressmen fear the reporter more than they do 
the policeman. Our fathers insisted on every citizen taking part in 
public affairs. They fined for tardiness or for non attendance at the town- 
meetings. In those meetings for free discussion, they learned to under- 
stand their rights and privileges as citizens, and acquired moral and in- 
tellectual strength to maintain them. The institutions of our American 
society are, as our history shows, no mushroom growth. The press, the 
platform, the ballot-box are the outgrowth of the principles of constitu- 
tional liberty that our fathers slowly learned to be true and right. We 
believe that our American institutions furnish the best means of national 
development, give the strongest assurance of national stability, because 
they have their foundation based on principles of eternal truth and 
immutable morality. 

We do not claim that in their measures and methods our fathers were 
above all criticism. They made a mistake, for instance, we are free to 
confess, in insisting upon church-membership as a qualification for citizen- 
ship. That was only their way, however, of asserting the truth that, of 
right, knowledge has a controlling influence over ignorance, maturity of 
judgment over inexperience, integrity of character over vice and immo- 
rality. They outgrew that puerile notion about church-membership. 
In later years they abandoned also the notion, that a Church of 
Christ needs any direct support from the State. No taxation for Church 
expenses, for the maintenance of " the Standing Order," as our fathers 
called their church polity, would do for this house of worship, and for the 
ministry of religion, what your own voluntary contributions have done. 
Other mistakes our fathers may have made. But because, with the frailty 
incident to humanity, they sometimes staggered beneath the burden of 
new responsibilities, shall we mock them for their blunders, instead of 
honoring them for their fidelity to their convictions ? The spirit that vents 
itself in profane ribaldry and unseemly jests about Puritan asceticism and 
Puritan bigotry, is the spirit of the mob that, on the way to Calvary, 
taunted the Divine Redeemer of men with unmanly weakness, because 
He fainted beneath the burden of the cross ; and jeered the Almighty 
Saviour, as His heart broke in mortal agony, with their scornful derision 
of His claim to be the Saviour from sin. 



31 

II. " Honor thy father and thy mother." For their personal worth of 
character, as well as for the relations which thei/ sustain to us, I remark, 
in the second place, ought we to be ready now and ever to do double 
honor to our ancestry. That they were our fathers, is in itself sufficient 
reason for filial reverence. Far distant be the day when the divine in- 
stitution of the family shall ever be willingly set aside at the demand of 
;i humanitarian philosophy, as frothy as it is shallow. The absolute 
equality ftf one human being with another is, in fact and reason, an absolute 
impossibility. Social differences there always will be so long as only 
•me point can be the centre of a circle. Political inequalities, legislative 
iniquities, there need not be, so long as in a perfect sphere every point on 
the whole surface is equally distant from the centre. In declaring it to be 
a self-evident truth that " all men are created equal/'" the signers of the 
Declaration of Independence affirmed that the country in which a man 
was born, or his social surroundings, do not affect his manhood, make him 
anv the less a man. They did not intend to deny the differing relations • 
and fitnesses out of which arise our mutual obligations and our reciprocal 
duties. To set aside these mutual relations, to put children on an equality 
with parents, to deny all authority of one person over another, in order to 
do away with the distinction of priority and superiority, offices and services, 
is as absurd as it would be to level down these mountains that are the 
glory of this Sheffield landscape. Any endeavor to secure a uniform 
distribution of powers and privileges in human society, is as impracticable 
an undertaking as it would be to stop the earth's motion on its axis, that 
there may be no night with its darkness ; or to stop the earth's motion in 
its orbit, that there may be no winter with its cold. 

" Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the 
land," is the Divine command, the first commandment with promise. 
Rightly interpreted, the text is the statement of a first truth in political 
science, that the prosperity of a people can be secured only by the obser- 
vance of God's natural and providential appointments. Our fathers, 
who bequeathed to us the priceless heritage of constitutional liberty, were 
men who believed in God. The liberty they loved was liberty that 
comes from fulfilling God's laws ; not the wild unreason that sets all law 
at defiance. They rightly sought in the Scriptures the true principles 
of national prosperity. "We recognize in the text a fundamental principle 
in the divine constitution of human society. It is not an assurance 
of individual longevity on condition of filial obedience. We read, as a 
con-elated Scripture truth, "Train up a child in the way he should go> 
and when he is old, he will not depart from it." We do not take 
this as a promise of absolute and universal success in training children to 
be pious, but as the statement of this general truth, that, if we train our 
children in accordance with the powers, opportunities, and fitnesses which 



32 

God in His providence has appointed for them, not in ways or for ends 
contrary to these, we may confidently expect them to continue in such a 
course, nature and grace working harmoniously in the same direction. 

It was one of the many sage remarks of that eminent master of social 
philosophy, Edmund Burke, that " people who do not look back to their 
ancestors, will not look forward to their posterity." We look back to 
the exemplary piety as well as patriotism of our revolutionary ancestry ; 
a,nd to the continuance of like reverential regard for the will of God do 
we look for the continuance of our national prosperity. Human history is 
but the gradual unfolding of the Divine purpose. True philosophy 
recognizes this, seeks to know God's will more fully, to follow it more 
perfectly. Much of the modern tendency to put development in place of 
design in creation, arises from the unuttered sentiment that, if other 
creatures began their existence without a purpose, then we human beings 
may thus live. But our fathers were what they were, you and I are what 
we are, because of our connection with God's purpose. We can see a provi- 
dential fitness in these Centennial celebrations at this particular juncture 
of affairs. We are not now, as a people, filled with the pride of success, 
as Nebuchednezzar was, when he walked in his gardens, unsurpassed by 
any previous royal magnificence, and exclaimed in his self-sufficiency, "Is 
not this great Babylon that I have builded ? " We are not now as we 
were a few years ago, in our selfish greed driving, like Jehu, a mad race 
down to disaster and disgrace. Rather are we like one recovering from 
fever brought on by some over-indulgence, tottering as we try to take 
hold of the work of life anew. The providence of God is teaching us, as 
Hezekiah was taught, the lesson of our human weakness, and of our 
need of humble fidelity and purer spiritual-mindedness in the position 
we occupy. 

We find ourselves to-day suffering under various incidental evils, — evils 
not attributable wholly to republican institutions, for the whole civilized 
world seems to be suffering in similar fashion. These evils would seem to 
be incidental to the present stage of the world's progress, like some of the 
troubles incident to childhood or puberty. Yet there is need for us to 
look back, and to ask if we have not departed from the true line of 
duty. In Christ's time, when society had become corrupt, and divorces 
were as common and as shameless as they are among us now, He turned 
back the pages of history as we do to-day, and said, " From the beginning 
it was not so." Such reflection from previous experiences throws a 
guiding light on our present condition, and marks the course of future 
duty. It is well for us, on occasion arising, to recur to those crises-times 
in human history, when humanity seems to reach a high- water mark of 
social attainment. Every year in the valley of the Nile, the people scan 
with eager scrutiny the pillar on which is marked the measured rise of 



33 

the spring-time floods. As the waters rise towards the level of former 
years or recede from it, so do the people anticipate, in accordance with 
their observation, a year of scarcity or one of plenty. Now that a swelling 
tide of patriotic memories, — a tide, it is to be hoped, that shall know no 
refluent wave, — is lifting us up to this point of observation, it is a question 
of grave import to us: Are we true to the record of our fathers ; or, have 
we fallen back from their standard of character and duty '? 

It is well for us to revert to the lessons of the past, to revere the 
memories, as we recount the worth, of the men who achieved for us and for 
the world such a work as gladdens our hearts and homes to-day. Its re- 
sults of good reach further and wider with every new period of advancing 
time. When we think of the material progress made in this last century, 
as exhibited in the Exposition at Philadelphia, we may say, with humble 
gratitude, not with proud complacency, in the words of the disciple who 
spoke to Jesus of the temple, how it was adorned with goodly gifts, 
'' See what manner of workmanship and what buildings are here ! " We 
have doubled our population every fifteen years, and doubled our wealth 
every ten years. The three hundred thousand colonists are now become 
forty millions of American citizens. How different are our feelings, desires, 
wants, from these that our fathers experienced one hundred years ago ! 
Steam and the telegraph, in providing means of rapid transit and instanta- 
neous diffusion of intelligence, have changed entirely our social system 
and our social problems. Fifty years ago one-thirtieth of our population 
dwelt in cities; now, one fifth. 

Around the memorial pillar that commemorates our army's first bap- 
tism of fire, there gathered, a year ago last June, many forms of a dusky 
race, once wearing the fetters of bondage, now fellow-citizens with us 
and fellow-sovereigns by the grace of God in a land of universal 
freedom. Only within fifteen years have we thrown off the excrescence 
of negro slavery, which the citizens of Sheffield denounced in a town- 
meeting called for the purpose, more than one hundred years ago, Feb- 
ruary 25, 1774.* This summer's sun looks down on neither master nor 
slave throughout our wide domain. But we have, in the judgment of 
thoughtful men, exposed ourselves to great peril in extending so freely 
the right of suffrage. We have given opportunity to demagogism, and 
provided no sufficient check against its sway. We have made possible 
the ring, the caucus, the lobby, and have given ourselves over, bound 
hand and foot, to their domination. 

* On Feb. 25, 1774, a " warrant" calling the annual towu-meeting was issued, 
containing the following item : — 

''10'Mo take into consideration the present inhuman practice of enslaving our 
fellow creatures, the natives of Africa." At the meeting, held Mar. 14, 1774, it was 
voted to defer action, the subject "being under the consideration of the general court." 

— rM. N.. Jr.! 



34 

" Oh ! you and I have heard our fathers say, 
There was a Brutus once, that would have brook'd 
Th' eternal devil to keep his state in Rome, 
As easily as a king." 

Who will be our Brutus to deliver our people from the rule of party, 
that lias so debauched our political management, corrupted our officials, 
battened on our national life ? Must our glorious ideals be inevitably de- 
based in the wear and tear of public life ? Must we accommodate ourselves 
to the existing state of things, and lower our standard of character and 
duty to what may seem the exigencies of the hour? Or, are we not ready 
now for a return to the Puritan idea, that it is righteousness, not wealth, 
not size, not strength, which alone exalteth a nation? Our fathers valued 
as highly the incorruptible integrity of Samuel Adams, as they did the 
liberal opulence of John Hancock. Are republics ungrateful ? Or is it 
that human nature is more ready to show favor to those who humor its 
whims, than to those who have done it real service ? Will the time never 
come when we shall have public officials such as we might have, if we 
would honor fidelity to trust, rather than fealty to party ? Is it money 
that commands our suffrages, or partisan feeling that selects our candi- 
dates ? Do we not believe that 

" High worth is elevated place — 'tis more : 
It makes the post stand candidate for thee"? 

Our fathers could not anticipate what should be the future of the 
country of whose institutions they laid the foundation-stones, and it was 
not the consequences of their actions that determined them to do as they 
did. There is a sublimity in their heroism, because of what it was in 
itself, not because of any display they made of themselves, nor because 
what they did had such influence for good over the destinies of succeeding 
generations and oth*er nationalities. These men, in their coats of home- 
spun, transacting church and town business in their rude meeting-houses, 
were engaged in noble work, far more worthy of perpetuation by historic 
pen or pencil, than the fine dresses and gilded magnificence of the courts 
of France and England. Rude in manners, uncouth in expression, they 
may have been, but they had more of true manliness than all the courtly 
reprobates of Parisian society have ever shown. It has of late become 
altogether too common to decry our New-England ancestry as wanting 
in true generosity of spirit, one-sided in their views of truth, severely 
ascetic in their ideas of life. The best refutation of such slanders is 
better knowledge of Puritan sentiments and methods, circumstances and 
achievements. With the impulse given this Centennial year to historical 
investigation, we may anticipate a more just and exalted estimate of the 
genuine worthiness of that generation, now passed away from earth, who 
incarnated in their lives such ideals of manly nobility and womanly 



35 

virtue, as we do well to revere. The largest portion of the Sacred 
Scriptures is historical, that we may know what constitutes true manhood 
and womanhood by study of personal experience, rathe/ than by discussion 
of abstract principles. We know what elements make up the Puritan 
character, shown in determined adherence to the right, simplicity of pur- 
pose, reverence for spiritual worth. Ought not these to form our ideal 
of that manliness which should be desired and endeavored by each of 
us for himself, by each for all ? I rejoice to believe that, on our fathers' 
loyalty to the right, we have grafted charity for error and ignorance. 
If our religious life shows not so much of that godliness that holds itself 
aloof from all iniquity, it shows more of that humanity which has learned 
Christ's lesson of the purifying and elevating power of brotherly, self- 
sacrificing love. We New-England Congregationalists have learned from 
our Baptist brethren that the largest liberty for the individul conscience 
is to be demanded, not dreaded. We have learned from our Methodist 
brethren, not to be ashamed of emotion in religion, and how to bring 
more of the gladness of heaven into the services of earth by giving fullest, 
freest expression to warm, joyous, grateful love. And our Episcopal 
churches, if they do have bishops and a liturgy, do, in their modes of 
worship, meet real human needs, and fittingly express human desires. 

We ought, indeed, to go beyond our fathers in attainment, yet never 
away from their principles. For, of the character of our Puritan ancestry, 
a distinguished jurist has truthfully said : " We have no desire, like the 
nations of the Old World, to deduce our lineage from superhuman beings, 
or to clothe the sage and heroic spirits, who laid the foundations of our 
Republic, with the exaggerations of poetic minds. Like the Pantheon at 
Rome, simple, erect, severe, sublime, the bright atmosphere of truth 
only irradiates its bold and noble proportions, encumbered by no meretri- 
cious ornament, heightened by no illusion of fiction." Our fathers belonged 
to that order of souls which Milton describes — 

" Who shine along the path of centuries, 
In full and perfect brightness standing forth, 
In their own loftiness the beacon-lights 
By which the world is guided and held up 
From its forever- downward tendency." 

III. Honor is due our fathers, and this is the last reason I shall assign, 
because of the sacrifices which tliey made in our behalf. 

The war of Independence was no mere faction fight, — two parties 
contending for political supremacy on no better grounds than that each 
claimed such supremacy. Such conflicts the world has too often seen. 
Such revolutions as a change of dynasties, when the sovereign power has 
passed from one family to another, history has often recorded. But the 
change wrought by the American Revolution was the introduction of a 



36 

new order of things, a marked epoch in the history of human society. 
The sovereign people by the grace of God took their proper place as the 
source and fountain of governmental organization and administration. In 
poverty and feebleness our fathers began the contest with the English 
government for the maintenance of their civil and religious liberties. 
The struggle resulted in originating and securing new and better forms 
of political administration. Old forms were followed, old usages main- 
tained, with sturdy Anglo-Saxon conservatism, till providential circutn- 
stances set them aside as obsolete. 

As one iniquitous measure after another was introduced by the con- 
stitutional advisers of the English monarch, resistance at first took the 
form of remonstrance. This town of Sheffield, in common with others, 
entered, again and again, on its records, most determined protests against 
the Stamp Act, the Tax on Tea, and the Boston Port Bill. When the 
English government began its arbitrary and impolitic measures of retalia- 
tion to destroy the commerce of Boston, Sheffield and other towns in 
the colon}' - contributed to the support of the poorer people thrown out of 
employment in that city. With almost entire unanimity of sentiment, 
the people of Massachusetts were outspoken in their denunciation of the 
attempt to extort a revenue from the colonies for the support of royal 
extravagance and aristocratic pretensions. Some there were, who clung 
to a desperate hope of possible peaceful adjustment of matters in dis- 
pute. But the appointment of General Gage to be the governor, the 
seizure of stores at Concord, forced upon the people at last the sad con- 
viction, that no resource was left but an appeal to the stern arbitrament 
of war. The battle of Bunker Hill was fought, the siege of Boston 
begun, and, gradually, public sentiment throughout all the colonies settled 
upon a declaration of independence as the next step to be taken. 

While other colonies took other methods of giving expression to public 
sentiment, and North Carolina was the first to pronounce in favor of 
independence, Massachusetts, with the usual calm, deliberate determina- 
tion that characterized her action, called for an expression of opinion from 
the whole people through special town-meetings.* It was in response 



* On Friday, May 10, 177(5, the last day of the session held at Watertown, we find 
this entry on the Journal of the House of Representatives : — 

"Resolved, as the opinion of this House, thai the inhabitants ot each town in this 
'Jolony ought to advise the Person or Persons, who. shall be chosen to represent them in 
the next General Court, whether that if the honorable Congress should for the safety of 
said Colonies, declare them Independent of the Kingdom of Great Britain, they the 
said Inhabitants will solemnly engage with their Lives and Fortunes to support the 
( 'ongress in the measure. 

"Ordered, that Mr. Cooper get the foregoing Resolve printed in the several News 
Papers as soon as possible," 

The action taken by the several towns was. in neatly every instance, favorable to a 



37 

to this call of the House of Representatives, that, at the town-meeting in 
Sheffield, June 18, 1776, that action was taken in favor of independence, 
which we commemorate on this anniversary day. 

That was no meaningless expression of sentiment, when, with such 
unanimity, our fathers pledged " their lives and fortunes " to their country's 
cause. Independence, civil and religious: Independence, no official be- 
tween any man and his God. Independence, no royal prerogative be- 
tween the people and the power they wished to exercise for God and for 
humanity in such ways as seemed to them just and expedient : Indepen- 
dence, and only this, was an object grand enough to call forth the devotion, 
to enlist the sympathies, and command the cooperation of all the people 
of all the colonies. It was really for independence, though not at first so 
designed, that the conflict was begun at Lexington, transferred to Boston, 
organized for victory at Philadelphia, successfully ended by the Treaty of 
Versailles. The American colonies could no longer be regarded as the 
brightest jewel in the crown of England's King. The United States of 
America were recognized as one of the sisterhood of nations : a nation,, 
not a province : a nation, not a government. 

"Thy spirit, Independence, let me share, 

Lord of the lion heart and eagle eye. 
Thy steps I follow with my hosom bare, 

Nor heed the storm which hurls along the sky." 

Enjoying to-day the gladness that brightens this beautiful valley and 
the peace that seems assured to us by these guardian hills, which lift 
themselves in such stately grandeur, yet seem also to bend toward us in 
holy benediction, let us not forget the self-sacrifice displayed for their 
country's sake, for our sakes, by our worthy sires. The birthday of 
American Independence was 

"Not in the sunshine and the smile of heaven, 
But wrapped in whirlwinds and begirt with woes." 

War, on however grand a scale, for however noble an object, is an 
evil to be endured, not a state of things to be admired and desired. 
One-fourth of the militia of the town were, in 1775, set apart as minute 
men, receiving regular training every week. Soldiers had been enlisted and 
were in service. One in seven of all the male inhabitants over sixteen 
years of age, was called for. Two additional regiments of soldiers were 
raised in June, 1776, in Berkshire County. The first regiment was raised 
from this southern tier of towns. The Colonel was Mark Hopkins, 
grandfather of the well-known and honored President of Williams 

declaration of independence. John Adams was thus enabled to assure the Continental 
Congress that the people of Massachusetts would support the measure which he so 
eloquently advocated, and so persistently urged. 



38 

College. Massachusetts furnished one-sixth of all the soldiers in the 
Continental Army. The spirit of the people was equal to every demand 
whether for men or money, clothing or beef, horses or military stores. 

As Washington says in his Farewell Address, " While just government 
protects all in their religious rights, true religion affords to government 
its surest support." The ministers of New England were active, all 
through the war, in kindling the enthusiasm and calling out the energies 
of the people. They would tell their hearers that they " saw too many 
men at home, when the country needed them in the ranks of the army :" 
or, that " God would take care of the people's liberties, if they would take 
care of the red-coats." One Sunday morning a minister read an account 
of the sufferings of our soldiers in Canada. That afternoon not a woman 
was at church. In place of the usual Sabbath stillness was heard the 
busv hum of spinning wheels. Before many days, the soldiers in Canada 
were rejoicing over the stockings and other garments those Christian 
women began that Sabbath afternoon to prepare. 

Sometimes the parson's pulpit and gown were exchanged for the battle- 
field and the weapons of war. Parson Allen, of Pittsfield, joined the 
militia of the county, and went with them to Bennington. He arrived 
about five o'clock in the morning in the midst of a thunderstorm. When 
reporting himself at headquarters, he told General Stark that the 
Berkshire boys had been often summoned out, but never allowed to fight. 
"If the Lord will only give us sunshine," replied Stark, "and I don't 
give vou fighting enough, I will never call you out again." When the 
fighting began, Parson Allen could not remain an idle spectator. Taking 
his brother's musket, he said, " You know, Joe, that I am a better shot 
than you. You load and I'll fire." When he was asked, in after years, 
if he knew that he had killed any one in battle, he said that, during the 
fight, he noticed that from a certain bush every once in a while there 
was a flash, and then one of our men was sure to drop. " I fired at that 
bush : I don't know whether I killed any man ; but I put out that flash." 
That is the kind of ministers we want now — not flashing powder off in a 
grand pyrotechnical display — but men who have the ability and the 
pluck, when any error in doctrine or in morals is taking off those who 
should be serving the Lord, to "put out that flash" and so stop the harm. 

But others are to give you more fully detailed statements of the sacri- 
fices and sufferings unflinchingly undergone by the patriots of Sheffield in 
the long-protracted war. Even with the clearest hist< al insight, we 
can form, however, only a faint imagining of the fearful nature of the 
struggle for Independence. Ah ! friends, think, for instance, what those 
soldiers of the Revolution suffered, with such fortitude, during the winter 
spent at Valley Forge. Their sufferings resembled the horrors which a 
worse than savage cruelty inflicted on the Union prisoners, shut up in 



39 

Southern prison pens. The men were half-clothed, scantily fed, neces- 
sarily underpaid, yet under a leader, who, if he was not the greatest 
soldier among patriots, is yet the noblest patriot among soldiers, never 
swerved from the object to which they had consecrated their lives, the 
achievement of their country's freedom. We know something of their 
joy of triumph when we call to mind the rejoicings at the close of the 
war of secession : or more thrilling even than that, the interchange of 
friendly greetings at Boston last year between Massachusetts and 
Carolina. As hand grasped hand in pledges of loyalty to the flag of the 
Union, as heart beat responsive to heart at the utterance of sentiments of 
amity and patriotism, it seemed as though then the dark clouds of conflict 
and disaster had broken away, never to gather again, while the white 
dove of peace descended in heavenly benediction upon the future mission 
of the American people. 

"O beautiful, my country ! ours once more. 

What were our lives without thee ? 

What all our lives to save thee ? 

We reck not what we gave thee. 

We will not dare to doubt thee. 

But ask whatever else and we will dare." 

In conclusion, I remark, first, that to belong to a good family is not, 
indeed, an advantage for which any one can take credit to himself ; but 
it gives him credit at once, prepossesses others in his favor. To be an 
American citizen is in these days to have an assurance of welcome all 
over the world. The brilliant achievements of an honored ancestry re- 
flect some portion of their glory on their descendants ; or a family's good 
name may be tarnished by the misconduct of some unworthy member. 
No services in which we may this day engage will do us any credit, if, by 
word or deed, we prove ourselves unworthy successors of the ancestry 
we boast. Living as we do at this Centennial period, we ourselves shall 
be called into judgment by succeeding generations. We shall be tried 
by what we are and do, as well as by what our fathers were and did. 
Theirs was the sowing in storm and hardship : ours is the reaping in 
sunshine and peace. Theirs was the planting of the vine : are we to 
debauch ourselves with the intoxicating wine of mere material good ? 
Or shall we make the fruit of the vine, as our Great Exemplar did, the 
symbol and pledge of our devotion to the one great work of earth and 
time, the victory over sin and, so, over death ? We do well to ask our- 
selves why our fathers deserve from us special honor. We come to-day 
to build no tombs to prophets whom our fathers slew, and by such memo- 
rial observances show ourselves shameless as well as guilty, inheriting 
from a heaven-provoking ancestry a spirit of rebellious ingratitude and 
stiff-necked disregard of Providential duties. Bather have we come, we 



40 

and our children, to this altar of worship, as Hamilcar came with his son 
Hannibal, to swear eternal hatred, not to any national ancestral foe, but 
to oppression, corruption, iniquity, in whatever form, or by whatever political 
party advocated or defended. For this anniversary day is a fitting- 
occasion, with the solemnities of religion, to inculcate upon the young the 
duty of loyalty to truth and to righteousness, loyalty to the ideals and to 
the religion of our fathers. " Let us here highly resolve," in the words 
of President Lincoln at the dedication of the cemetery at Gettysburg, — 
words which may well be repeated as every American citizen's sacramental 
oath, — ''that the government of the people, by the people, for the people, 
shall never perish from the earth." 

Secondly. The perpetuity of our nation will depend upon our fidelity in 
maintaining the moral and religious principles of our fathers, as well as 
the political institutions for which we are indebted to them. Mere 
material prosperity is not our hope or aim. It was not our fathers' motive 
in their resistance to the odious taxation imposed by Great Britain. It 
was the moral principle involved in these measures that roused the country, 
not the mere payment of threepence a pound additional for their tea. 
Only moral principles can enlist the deepest sympathies and call out the 
highest energies of men. Mere material good cannot have the force of a 
law, a binding rule for us to follow. If a man discovers a gold mine, or 
eats a good dinner, that is no reason why I should do the same. But, if 
he is faithful to his trust, incorruptible in his integrity, magnanimous in 
his sentiments, he sets me an example which calls upon me to exhibit the 
same moral excellencies. For, honorable conduct in any one is not only 
an exhibition of what man can do, but an example of what every true 
man will do. In the words of one [Gov. Gaston] who has admirably 
voiced the sentiment of the hour: "As we are stepping upon the thresh- 
old of our second century, let us determine that we will commence it with 
achievements in the field of civilization and of peace, worthy of a people 
whose birthright is freedom, whose policy is justice, whose God is the 
Lord." We forswear our lineage, if we are not faithful, as were our fathers, 
to the laws of God as well as the rights of man. Giving ourselves to the 
faithful discharge of our providential duty, though our work may seem to 
us humble, God will see to it that its results are great. As we look 
back two hundred and fifty years, we see in the cabin of the May- 
flower a few humble pious folks, austere and frugal like John the Baptist, 
but like him, too, commissioned of God to open a new era for humanity. 
They were great, in duty well-performed ; for, in the kingdom of heaven, 
greatness is measured by fidelity in doing God's will. No one can read 
the story of the War of Independence, or the recorded utterances of the 
men of that time, and not see that religious trust was the mainspring of 
our fathers' patriotism and valor. In 1776 each town had its Committee 



41 

of Safety, on the watch for the nation's foes. In 1876 the Centennial 
Commissioner comes from every nation to the birthplace of our national 
liberty, bringing, not "gold, frankincense, myrrh," natural products of 
sweetness and beauty, but the finest handiwork of human industry, the 
fairest creations of human ingenuity, in token of " peace and good-will on 
earth," if not of " glory to God in the highest." He, who was born at 
Bethlehem and suffered on Calvary, is united in our record of time with 
our fathers' life and work in the date we give our state papers, " the year 
of our Lord 1876, and of the Independence of the United States of 
America, the One Hundreth." In our lives let us unite the holy obedi- 
ence of the Eternal Son with the true independence, the real freedom, 
He alone can give. So shall we transmit to our children the heritage 
we have received from our fathers, neither imperilled by our negligence, 
nor impaired by our neglect. 



42 



HISTORICAL ADDRESS. 



BY GEN. JOHN G. BARNARD. 

On this festival occasion you have called upon me for a sketch of the 
local history which prompts and makes appropriate this our own peculiar 
" Centennial" celebration. Although a native, "to the manner born/' I 
feel myself but slightly qualified for the task. The theme is not the 
growth, development, and straggles for existence of a nation ; it is of a 
simple country village, whose "fields" have ever been those of the hus- 
bandman, freely visited, indeed, by the dews of heaven, but unstained 
by the red drops of war ; whose harvests wave not 

" O'er roots set deep in battle-graves ; " 
whose modest halls have never resounded with the eloquence of statesmen, 
nor been the scenes where the nation's destiny was at stake. 

Not that we are without history ; that there is not, for ourselves at 
least, much worthy to be recorded. But he who would worthily make 
that record should be not only one born amongst you, but reared in your 
midst ; to whom the color of your local life has been imparted ; to whom 
the history of each family has been associated with his own personal 
history ; and to whom the local events which must form his theme have 
become traditional. These are qualifications which he who addresses 
you, cannot claim to possess. Removed from this his " boyhood's home n 
almost in childhood, his youth and manhood have been spent in regions 
far away. His way of life, his pursuits, and his associations, have had 
little in them to remind him — much to cause forgetfulness — of the home 
where he was born. He is still, though nominally a citizen, almost a 
stranger among you. He must claim your indulgence, therefore, and 
beg you to accept the will to show his sympathy with you for ability to 
do better. 

For the approaching national anniversary, the great events of our 
national history form fitting themes. We must content ourselves with 
others which, though humbler, are not uninstructive. 

"O Hist'ry, thou hast done the world a wrong 
Immense and mournful ; on the Alpine heights 
Of human greatness thine enamoured gaze 
Has lingered, mindless, in that partial mood, 
Of silent virtue in the vale below ; 
And robed thy themes of darkness with a veil 
Of bright attractions, as the thunder wraps 
Hia ruin oft, in cloude of glorious spell." 



43 

We, dwellers of the vale, literally as well as figuratively, must turn our 
eyes from our historic mountain summits, and fix them upon the " silent 
virtues " which have never been lacking in our valley home. Our own 
history, as a community, must be our special theme ; and to those who 
think of history as taking origin in the obscurity of an indefinite past, the 
fact that our origin as a town is dated but one half century previous to 
the event we commemorate, is indeed startling. One hundred and fifty 
years ago the ground where we now stand was a wilderness. It was not 
till the Pilgrim Fathers had established themselves (1620 and 1622) in 
Plymouth, and on the shores of Massachusetts Bay ; nor until " the fame 
of Connecticut river, a long, fresh, rich river, which had made a little 
Nilus of it in the expectation of the good people of Massachusetts Bay," 
had prompted an emigration and a new settlement upon this famous 
river; not until this settlement (1636) had been more than four-score 
years extending itself along the beautiful valley of the Connecticut, did 
the time ripen for an incursion upon the wilderness of Berkshire. 

" On the 30th day of January, 1722, one hundred and seventy-six 
inhabitants of Hampshire county * petitioned the General Court for two 
townships of land situated on the Housatonic river, at the southwestern 
corner of the Massachusetts patent. The petition was granted, and the 
townships ordered to contain seven miles square each. John Stoddard, 
Ebenezer Pomeroy, and Henry D wight, of Northampton ; Luke Hitchcock, 
of Springfield ; John Ashley, of Westfield ; and Samuel Porter, of Hadley, 
were appointed a committee for dividing the tract, granting lots, admitting 
settlers, etc. The committee was instructed to reserve lands for the first 
minister, for the subsequent maintenance of the ordinances of the Gospel, 
and for the support of schools, and to demand of each man to whom they 
should make a grant, thirty shillings for every hundred acres, to be 
expended in extinguishing the Indian claims, paying expenses for laving 
out the lands, and in building meeting-houses in the townships. This 
committee met in the following March, at Springfield, and fifty-five 
settlers received grants, complying with the conditions attached to them. 
Measures were taken to purchase the land of the Indians, and on the 
25th of April, 1724, a deed was executed by them, conveying a tract 
bounded on the south by the divisional line between Massachusetts and 
Connecticut, west by the colony of New York, eastward to a line four 
miles from the Housatonic river, and in a general way so to extend, and 
north ' to the great mountain.' The Indians made certain reservations 
of planting and other land, and received, in consideration, the sum of 
<£460 in money, three barrels of cider, and thirty quarts of rum. * * * 



* Hampshire county then included the entire valley of the Connecticut river lying 
in Massachusetts. 



44 

This would seem to be the largest sum ever paid in Western Mas- 
sachusetts for the extinguishment of an Indian title. The deed thus 
given embraced the present towns of Sheffield, Egremont, Mount 
Washington, Great Barrington, Alford, a considerable part of Lee, and the 
larger part of Stockbridge and West Stockbridge. These two townships 
were known before the later division into towns, as 'the upper and lower 
Housatonic townships.' 

" The original settlers of Sheffield numbered about sixty. The first 
was Obadiah Noble, of Westfield, who spent one winter there entirely 
alone, or with no other companions than the Indians. Returning to 
Westfield in the spring, he started in June to resume his residence upon 
the Housatonic, taking with him his daughter, only sixteen years of age. 
She went on horseback, taking her bed upon the horse with her, and 
lodged one night in the wilderness while making the passage. 

" Though the Indian settlement in lower Housatonic was very small, 
it did not comprise all the natives within the territory granted. The 
tribe, however, was very much reduced in numbers, and Konkapot, the 
chief, of whom the land was bought, with eight or ten families, lived in 
that part of the territory of upper Housatonic, now covered by Stock- 
bridge. The minority lived on the reservation in the lower township 
already alluded to, called by them ' Skatehook.' " (Holland's History of 
Western Massachusetts.) 

Such is the history of the settlement of the town, and of Southern 
Berkshire, on the Housatonic. We find that, of the two townships 
authorized by the General Court, in 1722, the lower one was incorporated 
in January, 1733, with the name of the more famous English town of 
Sheffield. Doubtless among the early settlers there must have been 
some for whom the name had suggestions other than those so familiar of 
penknives and table cutlery. To some of our progenitors it must have 
had those of a home, or at least have been associated with tender mem- 
ories of the " fatherland." 

" Within the territory of our new Sheffield, in accordance with the 
order of the Legislature, there had been reserved a lot for the first settled 
minister, a lot for the ministry, and a lot for schools. Obadiah Noble 
was, as we have noted, the first settler ; among those who soon followed 
him (mostly from Westfield) were the bearers of the following names : 
Austin, Ashley, Westover, Kellogg, Eggleston, Pell, Callender, Oorben, 
Huggins, Smith, Ingersoll, Dewey and Root," many of which are still 
familiar and honored names among us. 

That of John Ashley has already appeared as that of one of the original 
grantees, or committee-men. Sheffield has had several prominent men of 
this name. John Ashley, son of the above, an ancestor of the speaker, 
graduated at Yale in 1730 j settled in Sheffield as a lawyer ; subsequently 



45 

a judge, colonel of militia, and magistrate, he died in Sheffield, 1802, 
aged ninety-three years. General John Ashley, his son, died 1799, aged 
sixty-four years, appointed by Governor Hancock, Major-General of State 
Militia, in 1780 ; he, too, was one of the largest land-holders of the town. 
It was he who commanded the small party which met and defeated the 
" Shays' rebels," in the first and only actual fight of that rebellion, near 
the western boundary of Sheffield. Col. William Ashley succeeded to 
the paternal estates of his father, and sustained the honored name which 
is now forever perpetuated in the cognomen, " Ashley Falls," by which 
the region is known where the family resided, and where their estates lay. 
Last in the male line, he died in Sheffield, 1849, aged seventy-six 
years. 

The original bounds of Sheffield embraced a large portion of what is 
now Great Barrington, and portions, also, of Egremont and New Marlboro. 
At the second town-meeting (the first having been held January 16), 
January 30, 1733, money was raised to build a meeting-house, forty-five 
feet long, and thirty-five feet wide (Appendix 1). The house was erected 
about three-quarters of a mile north of the present edifice and was 
occupied until 1760, when a new house was built, sixty feet by forty feet. 
This house is the one in which we are now assembled, having been re- 
moved, altered, and improved, in 1820, and again in 1856, renovated and 
embellished. Rev. Jonathan Hubbard was settled as the first pastor, 
October 22, 1735, and on the same day the first church was organized 
(Appendix 2). Mr. Hubbard was a native of Sunderland, and a graduate 
of Yale in 1724. He died July 6, 1765. Rev. John Keep, of Long- 
meadow, a graduate of Yale in 1769, succeeded him on June 10, 1772, 
and died while in office, September 3, 1785. Rev. Ephraim Judson was 
installed in his place in May, 1786. He was a native of Woodbury, 
Connecticut, and a graduate of Yale in 1763. He died in office, February 
23, 1813, and was succeeded on the following 13th of October by Rev. 
James Bradford, a native of Rowley, and a graduate of Dartmouth. Mr. 
Bradford remained the pastor of the church until May, 1852. Until 
1825, the town and Congregational Society were one and the same in 
action, but in that year the societ}' became a separate organization. A 
Methodist Episcopal Church was organized in 1842. A second Methodist 
society was organized at Ashley Falls. In 1866 the Rev. Mr. Eccleston, 
then Rector of St. James's Episcopal Church, Great Barrington, under- 
took to organize a mission chapel to that church in our village. In this 
he received aid and encouragement from the late Mr. A. C. Russell, of 
Great Barrington, to whom is due the credit of being a founder of 
the Episcopal Church in Sheffield. In 1867 the church was incorpo- 
rated, and in 1873 admitted into the diocese of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church of Massachusetts. 



46 

The specific act on the part of our town, which furnishes the motive 
for this, our own Sheffield Centennial celebration, is found thus recorded : 

" At a legal town-meeting of the inhabitants of the town of Sheffield, 
on Tuesday, the 18th day of June, 1776, it was put to vote, whether the 
inhabitants of the said town of Sheffield, should the Honorable Conti- 
nental Congress, in their wisdom, think prudent and for the interest 
and safety of the American Colonies to declare said Colonies inde- 
pendent of the kingdom of Great Britton, they, the inhabitants of said 
Sheffield, will solemnly engage, with their lives and fortunes, to support 
them in their measures. Voted in the affirmative ; two dissenting 
only." 

The famous "Mecklenburg" (N. C.) Declaration of Independence,, 
which resolved that " we, the people of Mecklenburg county, do hereby 
dissolve the political bands which have connected us with the mother 
country," though so explicit in form, does not appear to have been 
" designed for publicity, other than such as might be obtained by its- 
presentation to Congress." In fact a " dissolution of the bands which 
have connected us with the mother country," by a single county of a few 
thousand inhabitants, would be preposterous. The Mecklenburg decla- 
ration has no claim to be regarded as anything more decisive or more 
patriotic than were the Sheffield resolutions ; the intended and the sole 
effect of the one and the other being to encourage the General Congress- 
with assurance of support, should it, in its wisdom, take the decisive step 
towards which, as all patriots and thoughtful men saw, the march of 
events plainly tended. I know not whether any other communities- 
of the thirteen colonies acted likewise ; but we claim that whatever just 
meed of applause may be conceded to the patriots of Mecklenburg 
county, North Carolina, should be conceded equally to the patriots of 
Sheffield, Massachusetts. 

Though necessarily introduced as the especial theme of this paper, this 
action of the town of Sheffield was by no means an isolated one. Even 
more remarkable is the action (preamble and resolutions) of January 12,. 
1773, antecedent by more than two years to the Mecklenburg Dechv 
ration, and in the first and second resolutions, viz. : — 

" Resolved, that mankind, in a state of nature, are equal, free, and 
independent of each other, and have a right to the undisturbed enjoy- 
ment of their lives, their liberty and property. 

"Resolved, that the great end of political society is to secure in a 
more effectual manner those rights and privileges wherewith God and 
Nature have made us free " — anticipating the famed enunciation of 
"truths," held to be "self-evident," of the Declaration of Independence. 
Too lengthy to be read here, the record is copied in an appendix to thiu 
paper (Appendix 3). The list of the names of the committee-men who 



47 

drafted the preamble and resolutions, will furnish a clue, perhaps, to their 
remarkable character. 

Theodore Sedgwick, then a lawyer in Sheffield, represented the town 
several years in the Massachusetts Legislature ; was a member of the 
Continental Congress, 1785-86 ; member of the State Convention for 
ratification of the Federal Constitution, 1788 ; member of Congress (at 
one time Speaker), and a Senator under that Constitution ; subsequently 
Judge of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts till his death, in 1S13. 
It was he who, first as a lawyer, then as a judge, settled forever the 
question of slavery in Massachusetts. Chairman of a committee — as we 
find him to be not only on this, but on subsequent occasions — of an 
obscure country town, he was afterwards the intimate associate of Hamil- 
ton, Jay, Rutledge, and other prominent men of our early history. 

Major John Fellows, an ancestor of the speaker, had served in the 
French war, and, as brigadier-general, served afterwards in the Revolu- 
tion, on Long Island, at White Plains, and in the battle of Stillwater. 
" Col. Ashley " has already been alluded to as " General John Ashley." 
Stephen Dewey, Dr. Lemuel Barnard, Dr. Silas Kellogg, and others of 
the names, are those of men of known intellectual capacity. 

By the resolution of June 18, 1776, we, in advance, pledged, virtually, 
" our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor," to the support of the 
great act of July 4, 1776. Nor did we fail to fulfil this anticipatory 
pledge. On June 30, 1777, the first town-meeting was called in the 
name of the government and people of Massachusetts Bay. " Dr. Lemuel 
Barnard was chosen moderator ; Theodore Sedgwick, Richard Jacob, and 
Col. Aaron Root, were chosen a committee to give instructions to the 
representatives (in the General Court) relative to the money raised for 
the soldiers that turn out or are drafted to go in an allarm " [sic). It was 
voted that " each non-commissioned officer and private who shall march 
by reason of allarm until the — day of October, shall receive two shillings 
per day while on the march, and one shilling per day while in camp, in 
addition to the present Continental and Government pay." 

The following minute appears of proceedings at a meeting on January 
9, 1778, Theodore Sedgwick moderator : — " To William Bacon, Esq., 
one of the representatives for the towns which are to attend the present 
sessions of the Great and General Court, this town, impressed with a 
sence (sk) of the necessity of an immediate ratification of the articles of 
confederation and perpetual union, published by order of the Honorable 
the Congress, highly approving the wisdom of these articles, instruct you 
to use your influence, that the same be approved in the House of Repre- 
sentatives of this State." 

March 17, 1778, we find the minute of a vote to raise "the sum of 
five hundred pounds, in money, to get a town stock of powder, lead, and 



48 

flints." It was also voted to " supply the souldiers in the Continental 
service belonging to this town with cloathing during the present year ; 
also, that the committee chosen to provide for the families of those 
souldiers gone into the Continental service, be directed to make such 
provision for their cattle as they think necessary." And again, May 16, 
1778, " voted that there be allowed the sum of thirty pounds to each 
Continental souldier that shall be raised in this town, agreeable to the 
resolve of the General Court of April 20th ;" and December 3, 1778, " voted 
to raise the sum of five hundred pounds, to provide for the families of 
this town in the Continental army " {sic). 

November 25, 1779, it was voted, after hearing a report from a com- 
mittee of which Theodore Sedgwick was chairman, that " two thousand 
and four hundred pounds is equivalent to one hundred pounds." (This 
was in reference to fixing, in depreciated currency, the salary of their 
Pastor, Rev. John Keep.) 

January 16, 1780, it was "voted to choose a committee to hire the cota 
(sic) of men required by the General Court" * * * "to give those who 
shall go into the Continental service for six months (in addition to the 
State's pay), forty shillings per month, in silver, or Continental money 
equivalent" * * * "To raise three hundred pounds silver money." 
From these items we infer that Sheffield's "cota" of men that year 
was 150. 

October 13, 1780, it was "voted to raise the sum of three hundred 
and fifty pounds, new emission, to purchase beef for the army," etc., etc. 
* * * " To raise the sum of one hundred and forty pounds, to procure 
cloathing for the souldiers in the Continental army," etc. 

The records all through the war are filled with such votes. Men 
were only raised for three or six months, and were clothed by the town — 
facts illustrative of the difficulties which our generals in the field had to 
encounter. 

In 1780, the first town-meeting was called " in the name of the people 
of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Bay ; " in the succeeding year, and 
subsequently, the time-honored word, " Bay," disappears, and the style 
becomes the " Commonwealth of Massachusetts" (Appendix 4). 

The foregoing brief notes must suffice to show how prompt, through- 
out the Revolutionary struggle, the town of Sheffield was to meet every 
patriotic call ; how faithful the pledge — the act which we this day 
celebrate — was fulfilled, "to support the Continental Congress in a 
Declaration of Independence" (Appendix 5). 

Passing along these records, we find, as the war draws to a close 
(practically decided by the surrender at Yorktown, October, 1781, though 
the Treaty of Peace was not signed till September, 1783), minutes of 
•quite another character, grave and ominous — as we can now understand 



49 

them to have been — as are the atmospheric phenomena which prelude the 

earthquake. On the 1st of April, 1782 ; it was 

" Resolved, that in a Commonwealth to suspend the laws, and to stop the courts of 
justice, is of most fatal tendency to that County and ought by all means to be discoun- 
tenanced by every one who wishes to support the liberties and happiness of the 
people. 

" 2dly, Resolved, that in the oppinion (sic) of the town, the Justice of the Peace ought 
not to be allowed any fee for attending the Court of General Sessions of the Peace. 

"3dly, Resolved, that the Governor's salary, as by law established, is, in the opinion 
of this town, excessive. 

" 4thly, Resolved, that in the opinion of this town, it is in the power of the Legislature 
of the Commonwealth to devise and establish a less expensive and more speedy 
method of collecting debts, particularly by enlarging the jurisdiction of justices, and 
enabling them to take acknowledgment of debts without process, and issue execution 
thereon under such restrictions and provisions as may appear necessary. 

"5thly, Resolved, that the price by law established is excessive, and that no travel 
nor attendance ought to be taxed on bills of cost more than is actually performed. 

" 6thly, Resolved, that in the opinion of the town, good pork, beef, and wheat, should be 
a tendure (sic) in satisfaction of executions, in like manner as is provided in case of 
extending executions on real estate. 

"7thly, Resolved, that Constables ought to be impowered to serve all writs and pro- 
cesses within their respective towns. " 

The foregoing resolutions were transmitted with the following petition : 

" To the Honorable, the Senate and the House of Representatives of 
the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 

" The petition of the inhabitants of the town of Sheffield, in town-meet- 
ing assembled, humbly shows, 

" That the town, on mature and thorough deliberation and examination 
have passed the several votes contained in the annexed copy ; we are 
sensible that your honours must, as a principle object, regard the defence of 
this and the other states in union ; we wish not to direct your attention 
there/ore (from ?) a single moment, but while your patriotic exertions are 
pointed to a matter of such great importance we hope it may not be 
thought either impertinent or unreasonable to call the attention of your 
honours to the Internal Police of the Commonwealth ; we can and do most 
solemnly assure your honours that we have a just detestation of all 
practices which have a tendency to unsettle the Government, and intro- 
duce anarchy and confusion in its stead, as necessarily and directly 
tending to destroy the liberties of the citizen, and as aiding the most 
barbarous and bloody enemies of these states ; at the same time, we beg 
permission to say that we ardently wish the Government as little burden- 
some and expensive as is consistent with the support and dignity thereof y 
accordingly, by these views, with the most submissive deference, we pray 
your Honours to take into your consideration the resolves and votes afore- 
said, and act therein as to you in your wisdom shall appear just and 
reasonable, and your petitioners as in duty bound shall ever pray." 



50 

Real sufferings, and, to some extent, real grievances, the nature of whioh 
is clearly indicated in the above-cited resolutions, were thus early 
"finding voice. 

It will not be my province to dilate upon that peculiar phase of our 
history which the ensuing years of 1783-4-5-6-7, developed. The 
" Shays' Rebellion " is the subject of a chapter of Holland's " History of 
Western Massachusetts," and one of our most prominent townsmen, the 
Rev. Mason Noble, has recited to you the sad tale, as it relates more espe- 
cially to Berkshire county and to Sheffield. I must content myself with 
quoting his eloquent epitome of its causes : — 

" During the war of the Revolution the thirteen States had agreed upon 
articles of confederation, but they conferred little power on Congress. 
It could recommend, but could not enforce that which it recommended. 
It could only advise action, leaving the States to do as they pleased. 
Bitter jealousy existed between the several States, both with regard to each 
other, and to the general good. A heavy debt had been incurred by 
the war. Congress had no money, and could not levy taxes. It advised 
the States to pay, but some of them were too jealous of Congress to heed 
its recommendations. Massachusetts, however, true to her honorable record 
from first to last, assumed her own share of the national obligation of 
the States which, though not yet a nation, had together undertaken to 
secure independence of all from the English dominion. 

" At the same time the land was in a terrible condition. Commerce had 
been utterly destroyed by the war. Trade, manufactures, and agriculture 
had been neglected. War had been the main business of the country 
for eight years. Many persons lost their entire fortunes. Villages, towns, 
and cities had been burned ; ships had been lost ; crops had been destroyed ; 
money was worth almost nothing, still it was scarce and hard to get. 
A mighty load of debt rested on the nation, states, towns, and individuals, 
and, taking the land through, few were ready to do anything for the 
general relief. A shock was needed to wake the land to energetic life, 
and that shock came in the shape of what is known in history as ' Shays' 
Rebellion.' " 

Berkshire, as we know, was the most recently settled county of 
Massachusetts, and the evils thus depicted bore heavily upon her. Yet, 
though there were numerous active cooperators in the county, it was around 
Northampton, Springfield, and Worcester, chiefly, that the rebellious 
gatherings were found, aimed mainly at preventing the sessions and 
action of the courts. 

In Sheffield, you are aware, was the "battlefield" of the only actual 
fight, and, if we except the loss of life accompanying the attempt made by 
Shays on the arsenal at Springfield, the only scene of bloodshed. The 
" only instance " (according to Holland) " in which a considerable body 



51 

of rebels exhibited the slightest courage ; " a courage, however, which 
he is malicious enough to attribute to "the quantity of liquor they had 
stolen and drank during the day." 

The establishment of the constitution of the United States, and the 
remodelling of our State government, tended to restore confidence and 
quiet. The return of malcontents to habits of industry, the natural 
increase of population and the development of our physical resources, 
gradually obliterated all traces of these disorders. With peace, prosperity 
resumed its reign ; our State and our county, rapidly increasing in popula- 
tion and in wealth, have been, conspicuously, the scenes of those busy 
activities in commerce, agriculture, manufactures, and in engineering 
works auxiliary thereto, which have been, during the latter half of the 
century, so characteristic of our country. 

We need not dwell on the episode of our national history, the war of 
1812, — a war which found little favor in New England, and in which our 
town seems to have had no further part than in sending its quota of 
militia to Boston, in 1814. An invasion of the coast was apprehended; 
but forty days of camp life at Dorchester, a review by the governor on 
Boston Common, and, on the whole, an "extremely pleasant time" for our 
militiamen, made up the events of this so-called " Governor Strong's war." 

It is the sentiment of the country that this Centennial of our national 
existence should be especially a new era of restored fellowship and 
brotherly feeling with those of our countrymen with whom we were, in its 
penultimate decade, in so deadly a straggle. Long years myself a 
resident among those with whom we were subsequently to join battle, the 
"better half" of my feelings has been with some of those who live south 
of Mason and Dixon's line, and I am little disposed to recall, on this 
occasion, events of the war. 

But I cannot omit some notice of the historic relations of my native 
town to this war. Her records show with how much patriotism and earnest- 
ness she demeaned herself. 

" 1861, May 4, Oliver Peck, moderator, W. B. Saxton,town clerk (E. E. 
Callender, Abner Roys, and Henry Burtch, were selectmen throughout 
the war), voted that the moderator and towm clerk petition the governor, 
in behalf of the town, to immediately assemble the legislature. On 
motion of E. F. Ensign, a resolution passed at a legal meeting of the 
inhabitants of the town of Sheffield, held on the 18th of June, 1776, was 
read, and ordered to be put on file." This, the resolution we this day 
commemorate, was thus recalled and recorded anew, — an example of the 
patriotism of our fathers ; an incentive to our own, in this new crisis of 
our country's fate. A committee (Graham A. Root, E. F. Ensign, 
Zacheus Candee, Archibald Taft, and Leonard Tuttle) were chosen, to 
report a series of resolutions." They reported, 1st, $2,000 to be raised to 



52 

equip volunteers from this town ; 2d, each volunteer to be paid $9 per 
month by the town ; 3d. families of soldiers to receive " comfortable 
assistance:" 4th, G. A. Root, S. H. Bushnell, L. Tuttle, T. B. Strong and 
H. D. Train, to be a committee, with full powers to expend the money ', 
5th, said committee may borrow not exceeding $4,000 on the credit of the 
town ; 6th, the committee to serve without pay ; 7th, the town-treasurer 
shall pay all orders of said committee; 8th, the committee were " to pro- 
ceed immediately to form a militia company." The resolutions were 
adopted with one dissenting vote. 

1862, July 22, voted a bounty to each volunteer of $125. A commit* 
tee of fourteen, " to solicit enlistments, and subscriptions of money to be 
given volunteers." 

August 23, voted a bounty of $100 to each nine months' volunteer. 

November 4, $2,000 for aid to soldiers' families. 1864, April 4, a bounty 
of $150, and to raise $3,000 for this purpose. December 13, raised 
$4,000. 

The town carried the spirit, shown in the resolutions adopted at the 
beginning of the war, through the entire struggle, and, at its close, passed 
a vote of thanks to the selectmen, who declined a reelection, for their 
services in procuring recruits. 

Sheffield furnished 269 men for the military service — a surplus of eight 
over all demands. Four were commissioned officers. The whole amount 
of money raised for war purposes, during the five years, was $30,033 68, 
besides the " State aid " to the families of volunteers, which was after- 
wards reimbursed by the Commonwealth, and which was, in 1861, 
$80 36: 1S62, $1,867 56; 1863, $4,S59 71 ; 1864, $4,300; 1865, 
$3,400. Total amount, $14,507 63. Total raised, $44,541 31. 

No town in the State failed to raise its full quota of men, and only two 
in our county failed to raise more than their quota ; but no town can 
claim to have been more prompt, energetic, and liberal, than Sheffield. 

I have thus hastily sketched our origin, growth and history ; but how 
unsatisfactory must necessarily be a mere historical sketch ! How little 
can we realize who and what they were — out fathers, indeed — who lived, 
in 1776, where we now live ! The word "father" carries us back to the 
time when we were children, and when we looked up into parental eyes 
with a tenderness and reverence with which it is not in us to regard other 
mortal being. Were those who lived here — and, save through those words 
and deeds we find record of, so utterly unknown to us — indeed our " fathers 
after the flesh " ? Does the brief century of years which lays in the dust 
all who have gone before us, and who have begotten us, thus dissolve all 
ties ? Are we indeed children of the dead, as w r e are ourselves heirs to 
death ? To Him, the " God of our fathers," who proclaims Himself not 
the God of the dead but of the living, we must appeal for answer ! 



53 

But, leaving aside these grave questions, how inexpressibly interesting 
it would be if, as we chance to pass one of the few remaining quaint old- 
time houses, destitute in front of porch and piazza, sloping back with its 
long rearward roof from two stories down to one ; or, perchance, one of 
the double-fronted old brick houses, with the numerals of a long-past year 
curiously worked into its front walls, we might enter and find there their 
vanished dwellers as they were ! 

Were they, indeed, those grim old " Puritans," of whom we have heard 
so much ; and who, though they landed on " Plymouth Rock," and 

" Shook the depths of the forest gloom with hymns of lofty cheer," 

do not, altogether, make us feel as if we should be at ease in their 
company ? Our narrative shows them to have been real live men — 
keenly alive to the sense of injustices and oppressions, — self-sacrificing in 
their efforts to remove them, and actively benevolent in behalf of those 
who were in need of succor. But, as if we needed a little of our own 
" human nature," to assure us that they were of our flesh and blood, the 
story of a " Shays' Rebellion," bad as it is, comes in aptly, if not 
agreeably. 

Holland tells us, too, that, " in social life, ardent spirits played an 
important part. Respectable traders dealt out the article to very miserable 
topers ; respectable men assembled, even on Sunday evenings, in the 
parlor of the village tavern, to drink flip and smoke their pipes ; respect- 
able young men went forth in sleighing parties, stopping at every tavern 
for their flip, and boys drank flip by the hour, in bar-rooms of respectable 
members of the Church. Then, Sunday night was the night for play 
among the children, Saturday night being observed as holy time. They 
pursued their noisy games in the street, or assembled in neighboring 
houses to play blindman's buff and tell stories." 

That there ivas a long period in our early history during which the 
evils of the free use of " ardent spirits " had not been adequately 
recognized, all of us whose memories extend back fifty years, can vouch. 
The use of ardent spirits was doubtless then, as it is now, quite too 
common, and Holland is but truthful when he says, " Respectable traders 
dealt out the article to very miserable topers ;" but I doubt whether there 
was ever a time when " boys drank flip by the hour," in bar-rooms of 
respectable innkeepers, whether members of the Church or not. Fifty 
years ago it was rather unusual to find an innkeeper to be a " member 
of the Church ; " not because they were not " respectable," but because 
of the peculiar attributes of church-membership in New England. 

It was in the early years of the century that " temperance societies " 
first originated. It is, indeed, only within that brief period that men 
have become fully conscious of the fearful evils which accompany the 



54 

use of ardent spirits ; nowhere were the evils earlier recognized than in 
New England. The earliest "temperance society" originated (1808) in 
a region bordering on our own (Saratoga County, N. Y.). Five years 
later (1813 )the Massachusetts Society for the suppression of intemperance 
was formed. Affiliated societies were rapidly organized throughout the 
State, and travelling preachers, or lecturers, went forth with the theme on 
their lips. They are many among us who can remember the first appear- 
ance of these excellent men, and the telling effect of their appeals ; one 
of the most common of which was the computation of the number of ships 
which could be floated in the liquor annually drank. The speaker well 
recollects that owe "respectable trader" went his way homeward, after 
such an appeal, vowing to stave the heads of his " wine " casks, and let 
his tributary rill flow to mother earth, rather than to that imaginary lake 
which floated the navies of the world, — that too real maelstrom in which 
were being engulfed the noblest ventures of our life's enterprise, the 
fairest promise of our New-England homes. The speaker is sorry to 
add that he has not reason to believe this virtuous resolution was carried 
into effect ; he has rather reason to fear that it served but to form 
another tessera of pavement for that place where "good intentions" are 
said to be trampled under foot (Appendix 6). 

Although that extreme rigidity of Sabbath observance, maintained 
by penal enactments, of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay did not obtain 
in the latest Massachusetts settlement, Berkshire, yet those of us whose 
memories extend back to the mediaeval period of the past century, will 
recollect the extreme strictness of observance alluded to by Holland. 

The commandment given to the children of Israel was absolute, and it 
was addressed to a people for whom its absolute observance was practi- 
cable. Such an observance is simply impracticable among the nations 
of the earth, as human relations and avocations are noAV constituted ; but 
the Almighty never commanded an impracticable thing, nor laid an 
absolute injunction upon man that he, his creature, should define to it 
exceptions. 

"When will the Sabbath be over?" was, if not on our lips, the yearn- 
ing thought, as Sunday's sun went down, of many a boyish heart fifty 
years ago ; not that, with the mercenary Jews, " we may sell wheat ; '■ 
not that we may resume our work ; but that we boys, released from 
unnatural restriction, may once more, at least, play. 

On such an occasion as this, personal reminiscences of early days might 
be deemed appropriate ; but the most far-reaching memory among us 
extends little beyond the mid-period of the century just ended, and there 
are not many to whom the " brick school-house " (many years since 
demolished), with its quaint curb-roof, — nor its successive teachers, are 
familiar reminiscences. One of these, a venerable lady, for whom there 



55 

are yet many to " arise up and call her blessed," is still living, though 
not among us. Another, a somewhat famous pedagogue, came here in 
the decline of bis powers, physical and mental, but, nevertheless, many of 
Sheffield's since-noted men (among whom my friends, Judge Bradford 
and Mr. Ensign Kellogg, now of Pittsfield) were, as was the speaker, 
his pupils, deriving profit from his teaching. 

There are, perhaps, a few present who recollect this " meeting-house," 
as it stood in the middle of the street, and its removal and remodelling 
(1820) to its preseut site and form. But many here present will recollect 
the commanding form of the last of our sole Congregational pastors, the 
Rev. James Bradford, whose flock comprised all the inhabitants (for, until 
1825, the town and the Congregational society were one and the same), 
— one of the last of that remarkable race of New-England divines who 
were so influential in moulding, so potent in maintaining, our peculiar 
New-England institutions. " Bequiescant in pace" be our invocation ; 
" Well done, good and faithful servants," be their greeting from the Master 
whom, according to their light and might, they so faithfully served. 

In one respect, Sheffield is unlike those towns of our State and country 
which are most typical of the growth of the nation. Quite destitute of 
water-power — nearly the only portion of the Housatonic valley which is 
thus destitute — and, until the opening of the Housatonic railroad (1840), 
almost cut off from communication with the great cities — the social and 
commercial centres — Sheffield has remained an eddy in the sweeping 
current of what we call our national progress. We have had but small 
addition from without to our population. A community of farmers we 
were ; a community of farmers we remain. Since the opening of rail- 
road communications, the upper towns of the Housatonic valley have 
been much resorted to, by inhabitants of New York and Boston, for 
summer residence and for sites of country seats, while our own town has 
been passed by, mainly because the broad plain, in the midst of which 
is our village, presents not, contiguous to the population, those view- 
commanding sites which are found hard by the more northern towns of 
the Berkshire valley. With the highest peak of the Taconic range, the 
Dome, or " High Peak " of our boyhood — improperly called " Mount 
Everett " on recent maps, in consequence of an unauthorized and uncalled- 
for innovation of the late Professor Hitchcock — overlooking us on the west ; 
the picturesque Hoosacs bordering our valley on the east ; the sinuous 
silvery thread of the Housatonic laid along the intervening breadth of 
green meadows, the broad expanse of which is broken by numerous 
beautiful wooded monticles ; with our excursions to the mountains, to 
" Bash-a-pish," to the " Twin Lakes," to the " Pool," and numerous 
others, we yield not the palm of scenic beauty to our rivals, and we 
envy not the encroachments of city life. Without wealth ourselves, we 



56 

"have not yearly displayed before us the superfluities nor the pretensions 
of those who do have it. 

But we must not wholly congratulate ourselves on our isolation. The 
great cities have not indeed added to us ; alas ! they have taken from us. 
There was a time — and the speaker recollects it — when such a country 
existence was an entity ; something complete and self-sufficing. Never 
a manufacturing place (in the modern sense), there was a time when 
nearly all our oivn manufactories were here. We made our own clothes, 
our own carriages, built our own houses, made our own silverware ; and 
repaired, at least, for ourselves, our clocks and watches. 

These arts, exerted though they were on a humble scale, have nearly 
all fled. Who in our country towns can make a hat, or a man's gar- 
ment of any kind, or a horse-shoe, or a harness, when the great manufac- 
tories, with concentrated " capital " and steam-driven " machinery," make 
them "in gross" for whole populations? 

With our self-sufficedness and small mechanical avocations has gone, 
too, in no inconsiderable degree, our intellectual life. Before the great 
cities and manufacturing centres had absorbed all the energies of the 
people, each isolated township was a centre of intellectual life to 
itself. The driving away of energy and intellect to the cities, or to the 
broader fields of enterprise in the West, is by no means peculiar to 
Sheffield ; but the effect has been more telling, since, for us, there have 
been few compensating influences. Massachusetts, more than any other 
State, perhaps, has devoted herself to the perfecting of education ; yet it 
may well be doubted whether any of the " high schools " of this region sur- 
pass such as those of Mr. Curtis, in Stockbridge, or of Levi Gleason, in 
Lenox and Sheffield, of fifty years ago. 

Before the days of railroads, the great turnpike route from Albany to 
Hartford lay through Sheffield, midway between those cities. Who is 
there whose memory reaches to those early years of the century, who 
does not recollect the daily passage of the stage-coaches ? With us boys 
it was the great event of the day; the qualities of the various "teams" 
were warmly discussed ; their " drivers " were among our heroes. Nor 
was it a matter of less interest to our grown population. Sheffield was 
the midday stopping-place in summer, the hostelry for night in the winter. 

It is related of the celebrated French author, Chateaubriand, that, 
when in this country, he travelled by this route through Sheffield, and 
passed the night at the tavern, still, in somewhat altered form, standing. 
Before retiring, he took a place by the fireside, and casually entered into 
conversation with one who appeared to be a villager. Each soon 
discovered the other to be something more than an ordinary villager or 
an ordinary traveller. The conversation increased in interest — the legend 
makes it to have been mathematical ! — became absorbing, and not till the 



57 

gray light of dawn stole in upon them, did either feel conscious that an 
entire night had been passed in this intellectual intercourse. Chateau- 
briand's interlocutor was Paul Dewey, uncle to our eminent and venerable 
townsman, Dr. Orville Dewey. I am sorry to say that I cannot verify, 
from Chateaubriand's published journals, that he ever passed over this 
Hartford and Albany route (though he did go to Albany) ; but the tale 
is of the class, u se non e vero e ben trovato : if not true, it is truthlike. 

If, from these purely local views with which I have occupied your 
attention, we extend our vision over the nation of which we are a diminu- 
tive member, we should doubtless find, in its successive and noble 
struggles for national existence, and in the rapid strides of progress by 
which it has now taken rank among the foremost nations of the earth, 
great cause for self-congratulation. 

The thirteen original colonies, whose narrow skirt of settlement barely 
fringed the Atlantic coast from Massachusetts Bay to the Savannah 
river, and whose population numbered less than four millions, have been 
the nursing mothers of thirty-eight States, whose territorial expanse 
reaches, without break of continuity, from the Atlantic to the Pacific ; 
from the great lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. Over this immense, area a 
reticulation of seventy thousand miles of railways has been cast, auxiliary 
to which our great rivers have been spanned by bridge-structures, the 
very conception of which was not in the minds of men one hundred years 
ago ; and even our own Hoosacs have, by cyclopean labor, been pierced 
to make a way for the " iron horse." The waters of the Atlantic have 
been united to those of the great lakes, and those again to the Mississippi. 
Thus have we put a double " girdle" of iron and of water around our 
by no means little " world," known as the United States of America — 
nay, a treble one ; and though the last be but a diminutive wire, yet, 
like the nerve-system of the human body, it is the medium through which 
flashes intelligence, and which brings all parts of the system into harmoni- ' 
ous action. 

Regarded as the results of a century's growth of the nation, they are 
indeed marvellous. But yet, there is " a more excellent way " in which 
we may not have achieved so marked a progress, or in which, if marked 
at all, it may be feared our progress has been re-gressive. 

"Ill fares the land to hastening ills a prey, 
Where wealth accumulates and men decay." 

It is by the greatness of our men that the true greatness of our nation 
must be judged — nay, by which even its material greatness will ulti- 
mately be determined. An eloquent writer * has well said : " In the 
perplexities of nations, in their struggles for existence, their impotence 

* Euskin, "Modern Painters.'' 



5S 

or even their disorganization, they have higher hopes and nobler pas- 
sions ; out of suffering conies the serious mind ; out of salvation, the 
grateful heart ; out of endurance, fortitude ; out of deliverance, faith. 
But when they have done away with violent and external sources of 
suffering, worse evils seem to arise out of their rest, — evils that vex less 
and mortify more ; that suck the blood, though they do not shed it, and 
ossify the heart, though they do not torture it." 

During the hundred years which have elapsed, our nation has passed 
through all these ordeals. " Endurance " has developed our " fortitude ; " 
u suffering," the " serious mind ; " and " salvation," the " grateful heart." 
Shall the doiug away with violent and external sources of suffering 
develop, too, with us, those "worse evils" hinted at? Shall external 
prosperity, with its attendant love of luxury and ease, " suck the blood " 
of our purer affections, and u ossify " our hearts, that they no longer throb 
with noble and manly impulses'? 

The century which we inaugurate will be tasked with far other prob- 
lems than those which tried the past one. And of those purely political, 
the most important will be that of maintaining good government — which 
implies the distraining of political corruption. No more difficult problem 
has fallen upon human beings, as civil communities enlarged themselves 
from mere tribes to mighty nations, than that of government. We 
Americans have grown up in — imbibed with our mother's milk, I might 
say — the belief that republicanism is the most perfect (as, in application 
to a great nation, it is the latest) phase of human government. A mon- 
archy, like yonder elm, to be stable and beneficent, must send its roots 
deep ; must be grappled, in the soil where it stands, by multitudinous 
tendrils of personal reverence, the growth of a traditionary past. We, 
as a people, had no traditions, and no great families to members of 
which the people of these thirteen colonies could concede preeminence. A 
republic was not only congenial to the predilections and habits of mind of 
the colonists, but the sole form of government practicable for. them. 
Indeed it may be said that, everywhere, men are outgrowing their tradi- 
tions, and the habits of personal reverence, which sustain monarchies ; and 
that a neiv monarchy can hardly originate again — at least, among highly 
civilized peoples.* 

The perfecting of the republican form of government is, therefore, the 
great desideratum, not only for us, but for civilized mankind. No 
greater work of purely human political wisdom was ever produced, than 
the " Constitution of the United States." Yet it may safely be affirmed 



* A new organization or distribution, merely, by which a new monarchy is made 
(e. g. y Belgium) out of older ones, with recourse to existing reigning families, does not 
come in the category of " new monarchies " alluded to. 



59 

that, could the vision of its makers have been extended to the present 
day, the work would have taken, in some respects, a different form. 
It is, however, to be borne in mind that, in owe important feature, the Con- 
stitution has ever been a dead letter. I allude to that which prescribes 
the manner of electing 1 the President of the United States. It was not 
intended (and, to me, that is one of the indubitable proofs of the wisdom 
of its framers) that the chief magistrate should be elected directly by the 
people. It was for a certain number of ''• electors," appointed by the 
States (no senator or representative, or person holding any office of trust 
or profit under the United States, being eligible), " in such a manner as the 
legislatures thereof may direct,'' to make the choice. Nay, more ; instead 
of reducing to insignificancy the Vice-Presidency of the United States, 
the "electors" were to simply vote for " two persons." When these votes 
shall be counted " in the presence of the Senate," " the person having 
the greatest number of votes shall be the President ; " the one having 
nest to the greatest number, " Vice-President. " 

Nor does the " amendment " (whatever may have been in the minds 
of its framers), which specifies that the electors shall vote specifically for 
"President" and "Vice-President," affect the fundamental idea. To the 
electors it was given to choose of their own volition and wisdom, for 
these United States, the Chief Magistrate. 

I care not to discuss the practicability of this method, remarking only 
that it leaves no place for the party " conventions " which effect, practi- 
cally, for each party, a choice beforehand, and that, this idea carried 
into effect, the demoralizing notions of " spoils " and of " victors " would 
have been unknown. The inauguration of President would not have been 
the inauguration of a new quadrennial period of contest. Our "civil 
service" would not have become, as it now is, a part of the " spoils " of a 
political " victory." 

We may not be able to restore that which, indeed, we never had : the 
constitutional method of election. What we may do, and what we should 
do, is to banish from politics the erroneous notions through which " rota- 
tion in office " is regarded as excellent and desirable in itself, and which 
makes " office " the prize of party predominance. We may place our 
civil N service beyond the reach of this kind of spoliation, and free our 
country from the quadrennial anarchy of a Presidential election, while 
removing temptations to abuse of power, by proscribing, absolutely, a 
" second term." 

We have assembled on this occasion especially for commemoration of 
our prospective adhesion to a " Declaration of Independence," to be 
made by the General Congress of the Colonies. In that declaration (as 
it soon after took form) the " king of Great Britain" was charged, among 
other things, with " taxing us without our consent," and with having 



60 

" refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the 
public good." 

Now, one hundred years later, we have no "king of Great Britain" to 
arraign • but, when mooted questions, the settlement of which is vital to 
the public interest, are shunned by the political parties in power, and 
bandied to and fro, lest there should be a loss of party prestige, have we 
no like grievance? Taxes, indeed, cannot be imposed without " our 
consent," given through legislative bodies chosen by ourselves ; or, at 
least, by a majority of all who, under a system of universal suffrage, have 
a right to vote ; but I will leave it to your own conclusions whether this, 
our palladium from taxation " without our consent," has proved itself such. 

Far as I am from being an optimist, I would not, on such an occasion 
as this, be a Cassandra. The calamities which Cassandra predicted, befell 
her people, because her vaticinations were disregarded. If the evils 
which portend at the close of the first century of our national existence, 
do not burst upon us in the next, it will be because, now deliberately 
recognized, they shall effectually be guarded against. And if our coun- 
try shall continue its unparalleled course of prosperity and greatness, it 
will be because a free people rises to the dignity of that " perfect 
freedom," which for man is only found in subjection, — subjection to divine 
law — subjection to human law ; recognizing that the boasted prerogative 
of "choosing our own rulers" is an imaginary benefit, unless it shall 
secure our being wisely ruled. 

My task is finished. May that glorious orb, source of light, emblem 
of life, which shall soon sink below the mountain-ribbed horizon of our 
beautiful valley, amid, perhaps, portentous clouds, yet not wholly without 
"good omen," rise with the morrow's dawn upon another century, a 
"sun of righteousness with healing in his wings," shedding rays of 
beneficence upon the homes of a truly " free " people ! 

"Righteousness exalteth a nation; but sin is a reproach 
to any people." 



61 



APPENDIX 

TO 

GEN. BARNARD'S HISTORICAL ADDRESS. 

[For the laborious examination of the records of the town of Sheffield, and the 
transcription therefrom of the portions read in his address, the writer is indebted to 
the gentleman to whose exertions the undertaking and successful accomplishment of 
the "Sheffield Centennial Celebration" was in so great a degree due — the Rev. 
Mason Noble.] 

(1.) It may be that some part of the first church building is yet in exist- 
ence, and could be identified. I have been able to trace its later history 
only as follows : — 

Mar. 14, 1764. "Ezra Fellows Ezra Hickock and Richard Jacobs 
" were Chosen a Committee to dispose of the old meeting house for the 
"Towns best advantage." They appear to have sold the building to 
Amos Kellogg, who seems to have been unwilling, or unable, to pay 
the price demanded, for we find these other items of record : — 

Mar. 12, 1765 — " voted to Reduce AmosKelloggs obligation for the old 
"meeting house Down to Twenty five pounds." 

Oct. 12, 1768 — " voted to Reduce Amos Kelloggs obligation or the 
" Judgment obtained against S d Kellogg at the Last Inferior Court of 
"Common pleas Down to fifteen pounds" — Amos Kellogg died in 1770. 
Unless destroyed by fire, probably the timbers of the old church still exist 
in the frame of some dwelling-house or barn. [M. N., Jr.] 

(2.) This date, Oct. 22, 1735, is rather that of the recognition of the 
church than of its organization. On that day the first pastor was 
ordained by a council — " present the Rev d Ministers and Messengers,"' 
viz. : 

" Timothy Cohens of Litchfield, Deac. Nath 1 Belden. 

" Samuel Hopkins of Springfield. 

" Peter Reynolds of Enfield, Capt. Joseph Sexton. 

" Jonathan Edwards of Northampton, Deac. Samuel Alen. 

" William Rand of Sunderland, Deac. Isaac Hubbard." 

This was, doubtless, the occasion of the first visit of Samuel Hopkins 
and Jonathan Edwards to Berkshire. The above extract is from the 
" Proprietors' Book." The early records of the church are missing. In 



62 

1813 Rev. Mr. Bradford made diligent search for them, and concluded 
that they were " either lost or never made." — The following items are 
found upon the town records : — 

Jan. 16, 1733, "Thomas Lee, Anthony Austin and Samuel Dewey 
" was chosen Tithingmen and Sworn. 

Jan. 30, 1733, " Nath el Austin was Chosen to Go and treat with m r 
" Pumroy or Hire Some other Gentlemen to Preach to us for a time." 

Mar. 12, 1734, "Joseph Noble Anthony Austin and Thomas Lee ware 
" Chosen Tything Men and Sworn." (The election of Tything-men took 
place at every annual meeting until within the memory of many now 
living.) 

June 7, 1734, " voted to Give m*. Eben e Devotion A Call to the work 
" of the ministrie In this Town — 

" Mathew Noble Ezekiel Ashley and Philip Calender ware Chosen a 
"Committee to Treat with m r Devotion In order for Settling In the 
" work of the Ministrie " — 

Oct. 18, 1734, " voted to allow m r . Ebenezer Devotion fourteen 
' ' shillings to be paid to Elisha Noble for Keeping m 1 '. Devotions Horse 
" While he was Here." (Rev. Ebenezer Devotion, A. M., graduated at 
Yale College in 1732 ; was afterward, I think, pastor of the church at 
Windham, Conn. He died in 1771. He was probably the first man 
to preach the Gospel in what is now Berkshire county.) 

Oct. 18, 1734, the town voted to hire " m r Benjamin" Pumroy " to 
preach for them six weeks. Dec. 20, they extended him a call. Mar. 
17, 1735, they renewed the call, but in vain. June 26, 1735, they 
extended a call to " m r . Jonathan Hubbard/' who accepted. 

[M. N., Jr.] 

(3.) This following is a transcript of the " remarkable " action or resolu- 
tions alluded to in the text, of January 12th, 1773. 

In the following the record is transcribed, as nearly as possible, "ver- 
batim et literatim." It will be perceived that the Scribe who made 
the entry, was unskilled. On the fifth of January, 1773, a Committee " to 
take into Consideration the Grievences which Americans in general and 
the Inhabitants of this province in particular labour under," was " Schozen, 
viz. Theodore Sedgwick, D n Silas Kellogg, Col Ashley, Doc r Lem. 1 
Barnard, Mr. Aaron Root, Major John Fellows, Mr. Philip Callender, 
Cap n W m Day, Dea n Eben e Smith, Cap n Nath 1 Austin & Cap n Stephen 
Dewey." — This Com 1 reported Jan. 12, 1773 — as follows — 

" The Committee of this Town, Appointed to take into consideration the 
Greviances which Americans in general' and the Inhabitants of this Prov- 
ince in particular laber under, and to make a Draught of such proceedings 
as they think are necessary for this Town in these critical circumstances 
.to enter into, Report as follows, viz : that, 



63 

" This Town taking 1 into there serious consideration and deeply lament- 
ing the unhappy situation to which Americans in general and his 
Majestys most faithful subjects the Inhabitance of this Provence in 
perticular are, reduced, owing to the jealous Eye with which America 
hath been veiwed by several british Administrations, since the Accesicon 
of his present most Greacious Magesty to the throne and veiwing with the 
deepest Sorrow the Design of Great Britain (which is but too apparent to 
•every Virtuous Lover of his Country) gradually to deprive us of invaluble 
Eights and previlidges, which were transmitted to us by our worthey and 
independent Ancestors at the most laborious and dangerous Expence 
Should asteem ourselves greatly wanting in the Duty we owe ourselves, 
our Country and posterity, Called upon as we are by our Brethren, the 
respectable Town of Boston, should we neglect with the utmost Firm- 
ness and freedom to express the Sence we have of our present Dangerous 
Situation, always professing, as with Truth we do, the most emicolable 
Regard and Attachment to our most gracious Sovereign and protestant 
Succession as by Law established, we have with that Deferance and 
Respect due to the Country on which we are and always hope to be 
dependent, entered into the following Resolves, viz 

Resolved that Mankind in a state of Nature are equai, free and inde- 
pendent of each Other, and have a right to the undisturbed Enjoyment of 
there lives, there Liberty and Property. 

Resolved that the great end of political Society is to secure in a more 
effectual manner those Rights and previledges wherewith God & Nature 
have made us free — 

Resolved that it hath a tendency to subvert the good end for which 
Society was instituted, to have in any part of the legislative Body an 
Interist seperate from and independent of the Interest of the people in 
general — 

Resolved that affixing a Stipend to the Office of the Governer of the 
provence to be paied by money taken from the people without there con- 
cent creates in him an Intrest Seperate from and independent of the 
people in general — 

Resolved that the peaceful Enjoyment of any preveliges to the people 
of this provence in a great measure (under God) depends upon the 
uprightness of and independency of the Excutive Officers in general, and 
of the Judges of the Superior Court in peticuler — 

Resolved that if Salleries are affixed to the office of the Judges of the 
superior Court rendering them independent of the people and dependent 
on the Crown for there support (which we have too much Reson to think 
is the Case) it is a precedent that may hereafter, conceeding the Deprav- 
ety of human Nature, be improved to purposes big with the most Obvious 
and fatal consequences to the good people of this province — 



64 

Resolved that Americans in general (and his Magestes Subjects the 
Inhabitants of this Provence in perticuler, by there Charter) are intitled 
to all the Liberties, Priviledges and Immunities of natural born british 
Subjects — 

Resolved That it is a well-known and undoubted priviledge of the 
british Constitution that every Subject hath not only a Right to the free 
and uncontroled injoyment use and Improvement of his estat or property 
so long as he shall continue in the possession of it, but that he shall not 
in any maner be deprived there of in the whool or in part untill his 
conscent geven by himself or his Representative hath been previously for 
that purpous expresly obtained — 

Resolved that the late acts of the parlement of Great Breton expres- 
porpos of Rating and regulating the colecting a Revenew in the Colo- 
nies : are unconstitutional as thereby the Just earning of our labours 
and Industry without Any Regard to our own concent are by mere power 
revished from us and un limited power by said acts and commisions put 
into the hands of Ministeral hirelings are the Deprivation of our inestim- 
able and constitutional priviledge, a Trial by Jury, the determanation of 
our property by a single Judge paid by one party by Money illegally 
taken from the other for that purpos, and the insulting Diference made 
between british and American Subjects are matters truly greavious and 
clearly evince a Disposition to Rule us with the Iron Rod of Power — 

Resolved that the interduction of civil Officers unknown in the Charter 
of this Province with powers which Render Property, Domestic Security 
and Enjoyment of the Inhabitance altogether Insecure are a very great 
greavence. 

Resolved that it is the Right of every subject of Great Breton to be tried 
by his peers of the vicinity, when charged with any crime, that any act 
of the parliment of Great Breatain for Distroying this priviledge and 
tearing away Subjects from there Connections, Friends, Business and the 
possibility of evincing there Innocence, and earring them on bare Sus- 
picion to the Distance of Thousands of Miles for a trial is an troble 
Grevance. [This is nearly as it is written. It is evident the person who 
entered these minutes into the town records, did not understand the pur- 
port, or else was very careless.] 

Resolved That the Great and general Coart of this Province have it in 
there power in consequence of Instrutions from the Ministry only, too 
exempt any Man or Body of Men residing within and Receiving Protec- 
tion from the Laws of this Province from contrebuting there equal Propor- 
tion to w r ards the Support of Government within the same nor can any 
such instrections or orders from the Ministry of Great Breton Justify Such 
Proceedings [for] should this be the Case it will follow of consequence 
that the whole Province Tax may Be laid and one or more persons as 
shall Best suit with the Caprice of the Ministry-- 



65 

Resolved that any Determination or adjudication of the King in Coun- 
sel with Regard to the Limits of Provinces in America, where by Privite 
Property is or may [be] affected, is a great grevence already very 
severly felt by Great Numbers, who after purchasing Lands of the Only 
Persons whome they would sopose had any Right to Convey have on a 
sudding, by such an adjudication been deprived of there whole Property 
and from a state of affluance reduced to a state of Beggary 

Resolved That the great and general Coart of this Province can consti- 
tutionly make any Laws or Regulations, Obligatory upon the inhabbitance 
there of residing with in the Same — 

Voted That the Town Clark duly Record the prosedings of This Meet- 
ing, and Make a true and attested Copy There of as soon as may be and 
forward the same to David Ingersole Jun r Esq r , The Representative of 
This Town, at the great and general Court at Boston who is hereby Re- 
quested to consider the above Resolves as the Sence of his Constitu acts 
[sic] the Town of Sheffield and to the — centituonal Menes [sic] in his 
Power that the Greaviances complained of may be redressed, and where 
as the Province of New York, by the most unjustifiable Prosedings 
have by a late act of there general Assembly extended the Limits of the 
County of Albany East as far as Conneticut River, and under pertence 
of having by that act the legual Jurisdiction with in that part of this 
province, by Said Act included within The County of Albany have exer- 
cised Actual jurisdiction, and the officers of the County of Albany with- 
out the least pretence of any Presept from the Orthority On this side the 
Line, by Colour of a warrant, executed in that County upon suspison that 
a man had been guilty of a crime in this County, taken him and carried 
him to Albany for examination in Inditement crimes have been tryed, 
to have been cometted at Sheffield in the County of Albany, Mr. 
Engersell is here by requested to use his Utmost Influence that the 
Alarming consequences from such proceedings dreaded, may be pre- 
vented & That the Fears of the people may be quieted by a speedy 
Determanation of that unhappy controversy And where as it hath been 
reported that the support given by the great and general Court to 
the Judges of the Superier Court hath been in addaquate to the service 
performed, M r . Engersoll is here by requested that (if this Report 
shall appear to be founded in truth) he use his Influence Saleries may 
augmented, to such a sum as shall be sufficient to support the Dignity 
of the office 

Theodore Sedgwick p e Ord 

Which being twice Reade distinctly It was put to Vote paragraph 
by paragraph Whether the town would Accept of Such a Report it pased 
in the affirmative Nemine Contradicente. — 

(4.) The first " Town Meeting" in Sheffield was held at the house "Mr 



66 

obadiah Noble" Jan. 16, 1733. The following is the record of the 

meeting : 

"voted mathew Noble Chosen moderator 

" voted at the Same meeting Hezekiah Noble Chosen Town Clerk and 

" sworn 
" voted at Same meeting John Smith Philip Calender and Daniel Kellogg 

" was chosen Selectmen 
" voted at the meeting & Daniel Kellogg was chosen Town Treasurer and 

" Sworn 
" voted at the Same meeting and Joseph Taylor and Elisha Noble was 

" Chosen Constables and Sworn 
" voted at the Same meeting Thomas Lee Anthony Austin and Samuel 

" Dewey was Chosen Tithing men and Sworn 
" voted at the Same meeting Nathaniel Austin and obadiah Noble was 

" Chosen fenceviewers and Sworn 
" voted at the Same meeting and Jonathan Root was Chosen Sirveyer 

"and Sworn " — 

[The names of Taylor and Root are not now found upon our lists of 
voters. The other names still continue with us. M. N., Jr.] 

(5) These interesting rolls are furnished by Mr. Thomas Austin, of 
Erie, Penna. 

" The following is a return of Minute Men in the Third Companv 
in the First Regiment in the county of Berkshire July 11, 1776. 

(Signed) Abner Callender, 
ClerK 

SergJ. Nathaniel Callender Jonathan Spalding 

Corp 1 . Solomon Triscot Zehulon Spalding 

Joseph Callender Samuel Warn 

Joseph Church Jacob Warn 

Samuel Triscot, j r . Benajah Orcnt 

David Callender Amos Gill 

Seth Triscot Ebenezer Jones 

Elijah Baccus David Dunham. j r . 
David Keys 

" Roll of Lieut. Enoch Noble's " Comp. . in Colo. Mark Hopkins Regi- 
ment of Foot Being the first Regiment in the County of Berkshire. 

Dated 
Sheffield, June 13, A. D. 1776. 

Lieu' Enoch Noble " Benjamin Cowle, j 1 

" Jeremiah Hickock " Jasper Saxton 

Serg 4 Anthony Austin Clerk Joseph Kingman 

" Anthony Goodepied Corp 1 Joseph Goodrich 



67 



Corp!. Amos Eldridge . 

" Ebenezer Kellogg 

" Elisha Smith 

Drummer. Irie Beach 

Fifer. Darius Butler 

Privates. Samuel Bush 

" Ephraim Kellogg 
" Joseph Cook 
" David Hickock 
" Paul Dewey 
" John Austin 
" Obadiah Bush 
" Joseph Seeger 
" David Walker 
" Nathanial Westover 
" Aaron Fairchild 
" Elijah Austin 
" Joel Kellogg 
" Ephraim Case 
" Augustine Austin 
" Gideon Kellogg; 
" Whiting Sheldon 
" Nathanial Cowle 
" Benjamin Bramin 

Ezekiel Noble 
" John Cotten 
" Joshua Boardman 
'' Joseph Taylor 
" Joseph Corben 
" William Johnson 
" William McGachy 



Privates. Zachariah Noble 

" Silas Marvin 

" John Fellows 

" Benjamin Bush 

" Benjamin Fuller 

" Nathaniel Downing 

Noah Hubbard 

" Joseph Steele 

" Ebenezer Smith, j r . 

" Elias Hopkins 

" Jonathan Parkes 

" Benjamin Spalding 

■' Dan Raymond 

" Samuel Kinsman 

" William Bement 

" Aaron Root, y. 

" Tho 9 Hart 

" Silvester Barnard 

" Timothy Hubbard 

" Thomas Halten 

" Samuel Shears 

" John Obryn 

" Mathew Noble 

" Aaron Miller 

'•' Abner Ashley 

" Joseph Churchel 

" Ruben Jackson 

" Aaron Hubbard 

" Roger Noble 

" Jeremiah Fox 



25 Guns, 3 with Bayonets. Every man had Wadding. 



Third Company of Foot in the 
July 11, J 776. 

Cap 4 . Roswell Downing 
Lieu'. Elisha Ensign 

" Theophilus Spalding 
Clerk. Abner Calleuder 
Serg*. Comfort Callender 

" John Hubbell 
Joab Austin 
Corp 1 Sam 1 Joslin 

" Stephen Tuttle 

" William Stephens 
(Privates) 

" William Day, j r 

David Ferry 

" Moses Eggleston 

" Joshua Lebaron 



First Regiment County of Berkshire- 

(Privates) Job Westover 
" Zacheus Spalding 

" Shubel Warring 

" James Linzey 

" Samuel Bibbins 

" Noah Westover 

" Johnathan Nicals 

" Samuel Hatch 

William Roach 

Henry Keys 
" Jeremiah Dunham 

John Westover 
" Aaron Taylor 

" Zadock Loomis 

il Enos Kellogg 



68 

(Privates) David Clark, )< " Nehemiah Kellogg. 

" Moses Westover 

" Peter Noble 23 Guns 

" Solomon Noble 5 Bayonets 

" John Nichols 16 Blankets 

" Asa Kellogg 4| lbs Powder 

" Daniel Taylor 220 Balls 

" Daniel Pattin 30 Flints 

" Philip Callender, j*. 8 Knapsacks 

"' Aron Slate 19 Horns 

" Linze Joslin 8 Priming Wires 

" Jesse Hoocker 6 Brushes 

'■' Elisha Ensign, j r . [M. N., Jr.] 

(6) [Perhaps as notable an example of the general use of ardent spirits, 
and as early a conception of the dangers of such use, as can be found 
anywhere, is given in these extracts from the Sheffield town-records. 

May 22, J 735 — " voted to Set the meeting House on a Certain Nole of 
" Land Easterly of M r William Goodriches Dwelling House which is In 
( l the Street or Highway 

" at the same meeting voted to allow three Barrels of Good Beare towards 
" or for the Raising of the meeting house 

'* at the same meeting voted to allow twenty Gallons of Rumb towards 
u or for the Raising of the meeting house or for the towns use 
" at the same meeting voted to allow twenty pounds of Suger to go with 
u the Rhumb 

" at the same meeting Obadiah Noble and Ensign Ashley ware made 
u choice of to Dool out Drink to the labourers when it is convenient 
tl and Likewiss to Sell Drink to Strangers or towns People and also to 
" Recieve the money likewiss Ensign Ashley to Serve as Pinman 
11 at the same meeting voted to allow no Drink to the Labourers after 
lt they are Dismist from Labour , 

" at the Same meeting voted to fine all persons that are Delinquent, viz 
" Such Persons as are Capable or Servisable In Raising of the meeting 
" House on the Days Here after mentioned the Sum of ten shillings a 
"Day for Each Defolt," 

Such were the regulations adopted and preparations made "for the 
Raising of the meeting House." These men are not to be judged by our 
standard. There was not the same moral delinquency shown in this action 
of theirs that is seen in the use of " grab bags," and u guess cakes," and 
" raffles," so common at the present day, for these things are known to be 
wrong, and are forbidden by law. 

The other extract is forty-two years later, March 11, 1777. 

" Voted that no Person shall Sell Spirittuous Liquors without liberty 
from the Selectmen and Committee of Inspection also that they Inspect 
Licenced houses " M. N., Jr.] 



69 



ADDRESS. 



BY THE HONORABLE A. H. DAILET. 



Kind Friends and Fellow Citizens : — 

This good old town which has called her citizens together and her 
children home to commemorate the heroic acts of their fathers, is faithful 
to the traditions of New England hospitality; faithful in its duty to the 
honored dead ; alive to the value of present blessings, and steadfast to the 
cause of liberty. 

You who were here born, and here have always lived, can never know 
the emotions that fill the heart as the wanderer, returning, catches the 
first glimpse of the grand old mountains on the west, the hills on the 
east, and the old church spires in the town. The pen cannot write nor 
the tongue speak all the heart can feel. To come again to this same 
place where, more than twenty years ago, we were wont to gather, in 
friendly annual reunion, and to now feel and know that in so short a time 
I am almost a stranger in my native town, because so many are not who 
then were living, that children have grown to man and womanhood, 
saddens the heart, chokes the utterance, and impresses the too often 
forgotten lesson, that life is as brief as its duties are grave. Of those who 
go out into the world, to pluuge at once into active and continuous strife 
in a career laid down at starting, how few reach the goal of their ambi- 
tion, or the elevated plane the imagination saw when, with resolute step 
and aspiring hope, the back was turned upon the scenes and endearments 
of early life, and the face set sternly against the obstacles to success. 

New scenes and new duties, whilst they divert, never can efface from 
the yearning heart of the New Englander the sacred memories of home, 
and to him there is no home but the land of his birth. The rest of the 
world may be his theatre of action — it may enchant and delight him — but 
he still loves New England, with her mountains and rugged hills, her 
barren rocks and smiling valleys, her crystal streams and pleasant 
villages ; her pure air and sapphire skies ; her churches and school-houses ; 
her intelligence, and freedom-loving people ; and all that combination of 
quality and association which makes New England peculiar to herself. 
Were I to be born again, and could I be consulted upon that very 
important event in a man's life, I would say, let it be as it was before, and 
my first breath of life be the inspiration of the air of New England. 



70 

Kind friends who may be with us to-day from other lands, or parts of 
our common country, will pardon our pride in New England, and please 
consider us not as intending' to disparage any other, when we speak of 
what we deem peculiarly our own. If we have been modest for a 
hundred years past (and of course we have), we propose to talk to-day, 
if we keep silent for a hundred years to come. Our pride, if assailed 
to-day, we stand ready to defend. If the achievements of the past give 
us no right to pride, as natives of this town, as children of the old Bay 
State, then had the Roman citizen no right to glory in Rome, when 
that mighty city was mistress of the world. Let us justify our words, 
and the deeds we commemorate. 

It has long been conceded that man from a low intelligence and 
primitive state has advanced, by means of mental culture and physi- 
cal training, to a much higher scale of being ; and, although he is 
still man, with thews, sinews, and brains, like unto his ancestors, he now 
lives amid the hum of industries, and the majestic play of powers and 
agencies which, even a hundred years ago, were slumbering giants in the 
productive bosom of the natural world. Man was not made for the 
world, but from a beginning out of that chaos which we strive in vain to 
penetrate, revolved this mass which Infinite Wisdom, through unfathom- 
able ages, fashioned and stored for the noblest and last of created 
beings — man. with a soul thirsting for knowledge, and grasping for God. 
The earth is his, with its products garnered by his hand ; its latent forces 
and powers, which his genius has quickened into activity ; all hi? 
servants — the industry of brain, nerve and muscle — are imperative require- 
ments of nature, to meet the constantly increasing demands of his being. 
Over and above all this, is the consciousness of that awful Presence 
which the soul feels is its light, its life, wherever it may be — whether 
upon the restless seas, in the solitude of the wilderness, on the arid 
desert, or in the jargon of battle, demanding unlimited freedom of access 
to the throne of the Father. 

All these rights are inalienable to his nature, they are God-given 
prerogatives; and every law which subverts them, oppressive, and the 
power which enforces it, is despotic. It is a sad commentary upon 
our race, that so much of human history is filled with the struggles 
and persecutions of men, the awful agencies employed to crush out 
from man a part of his nature, or to conform it by force of physical 
suffering to the dogmatic notions of others. Millions upon millions 
of men have died in the Old World, in defence of those rights, and 
as many more to subvert them. For centuries before Luther and Calvin 
led the revolt in France, Italy, and Germany, against the bondage 
of man's religious life, the yokes of oppression had become so irksome, 
and the priestcraft so shameless in extortions and moral corruption, that 



71 

the advent of these reformers was hailed with delight by a class of men 
whose notions were already in revolt and in consonance with these cham- 
pions of religions freedom. And for seventy-five years following, amid 
scenes of terror and suffering, such as we to-day cannot imagine, in 
those countries, and in England, were men and women who braved the 
most fiendish tortures in defence of religious freedom, upon racks 
constructed with devilish ingenuity, to produce the greatest amount of 
human suffering, the roasting of their bodies at the stake : — all this they 
endured, and gloried in a triumphant death, proving again to the world 
that man's religious faith is master over the suffering of the flesh, and 
cannot be subdued. A large class of these men soon were known as 
Puritans, and were remarkable for the purity of their lives, the depth 
and simplicity of their faith, their superior mental powers, and toleration 
of religious opinions. It was this stock of men which had risen superior 
to those around them, which had formed and assimilated as the natural 
outgrowth of ages, that, in the sixteenth century, broke loose from the 
grasp of the Romish Church in France and Germany, struck the despot- 
ism of Charles I, in England, under the leadership of Cromwell, and 
overthrew the house of Stuart. 

This is the ancestral stock of New England. From those men came 
the Puritans, who peopled these States ; and if the love of freedom and 
justice, graced with Faith, Hope and Charity, was ever a natural element 
in the heart, blood, bone and marrow of men, it was in these. Add, 
then, to this, that iron will which characterized them, so that they knew and 
would know no master but God, and you have a stock of men, from 
which we are proud to have descended. We are not unaware of the 
grave errors of these men. Poor human nature has not yet produced its 
faultless types. If their zeal was at times like Saul's, when, to serve 
God, he ignorantly abetted the murder of his chosen disciple, their errors 
were of short duration ; for, conscientious at heart, asking nothing from 
others which they did not exact from themselves, they stood in the fear 
of God, and labored for the welfare of mankind, and cast aside the follies 
incident to their early life, as a wise and prudent manhood does those 
of youth. They had long been hampered in action ; the freedom of 
speech had been repressed, and they had been impoverished by extortions, 
and, lacking that discretion which experience gives, they, in turn, exacted, 
for a time, an obedience from others to their requirements, which, to-day, 
would not be tolerated for an hour. 

This world had never seen before, and probably will never see again, 
the spectacle of a little ship, crowded to its utmost, with men, women, 
and children, and all their earthly possessions, turning forever, not only 
from the scenes and endearments of early life, but from civilization itself : 
the hazarding the perils of the ocean, the sufferings and privations of 



72 

an inclement winter, to make for themselves new homes among barbar- 
ous tribes of Indians ; in the wilderness of forests, where the white man 
had never been, and all for the sake of a principle. That Providence 
which makes the sparrows fall, controlled the winds and the waves. 
As if to lessen the force of the barbarians on the frontiers, a pestilence 
had gone before, and literally exterminated tribes of Indians ; and, 
almost as miraculous as the fall of manna in the wilderness, were the 
stores of corn found heaped and covered upon the shores, on landing, for 
the famishing pioneers. 

The founding of a nation cannot be assimilated to any work of human 
hands. The aggregation of material matter bears slight comparison to 
the forming nucleus of a nation. The incipient steps here taken, were 
the precursors of success. As these pioneers commenced and established 
their government, so would they naturally expect that all who followed 
them, would become willing citizens to support and defend it. These 
men were chosen pioneers for this very work, and adapted to the stupen- 
dous task before them. Whilst I have been, and trust I ever shall be, 
zealous in the defence of the rights of every man, of whatever race or 
color, to those natural prerogatives our ancestors demanded for them- 
selves, yet I am not of those who believe that the races of men are 
equal in all those qualities which the highest type of manhood shows. 
Do you ask me, Is it fair to make distinctions like this among our fellow- 
men ? I answer, No, but the races themselves have made it ; and, so long 
as they remain distinct and separate, they will continue with the lines 
plainly and sharply drawn between them. 

True flesh is flesh, and blood is blood, and brain is brain, the world 
over. So is rock rock, and wood is wood everywhere ; but the trap-rock 
of the Hudson is not like the granite of Quincy, nor the yellow diamonds 
of South Africa like the peerless gems from the old mines of the East. 
Basswood .may do for some domestic purposes, but oak must make the 
keels of ships, which are to withstand the surging of the ocean, and out- 
ride the fury of storms. So long as one race or class of people hold 
themselves aloof from all others, as the Jews have done from the days of 
Abraham, they will be found to maintain the type and characteristics of 
their ancestors from the first generation ; and the exhumed works of the 
sculptor's hand, of three thousand years ago, show the Jew of to-day as 
identical in feature aud figure with his ancient sire : and all the world 
knows that the shrewdness of Jacob has not yet departed from Israel. 

Therefore, giving to all, that consideration to which history entitles 
them, to-day the Anglo-Saxon leads all in the progressive march of 
nations. And whilst our ancestors became pioneers in the "great cause 
of human freedom, the circling years are unfolding the majestic working 
of the great plans of the Master Builder and Creator of all, and these 



73 

pure-hearted and fearless men became the founders of a nation, destined 
at the outset to amaze and startle the world. 

When a river has made its channel from the mountain to the sea, the 
flow of its water is easy and constant. All the rills and springs unite to 
make tb.3 brook, the brook to make the river, and the river is lost in the 
ocean. The bread which feeds the body to-day, makes bone, flesh and 
blood to-morrow. So likewise, when a government was once established 
by these colonists, here came flocking, in increasing streams, refugees from 
nearly every nation in Europe. 

Tf here they could find no haven of rest, then the whole world was to 
them a desert without an oasis or rock of shelter from the storms of evil 
passion with which they were pursued. 

Here came Germans, Netherlanders, Irish, Scots, Hnguenots, Swedes 
and Moravians, losing their several nationalities in the formation of a 
new one. From 1620 down to the beginning of the 18th century, 
Massachusetts and Connecticut were mainly peopled from England, but, 
after that, came more freely the refugees I have named, with very 
marked resemblance in type and character to the Puritans themselves. 
True, other settlements were rapidly made on the Atlantic frontier, but 
those colonists followed in the wake of the great New-England enterprise- 
Great Britain, from Maine to Florida, claimed by that very questionable 
right, the right of discovery, the absolute fee to the Atlantic frontier, and 
every colonist as a British subject. Great Britain, absolute mistress as 
she was of the seas, clung with tenacious grasp to every foot of land 
upon which her banner had been planted, and the American Continent 
had already been partitioned, by imaginary lines, among the great 
powers of Europe. Whilst the colonists freely joined with England to 
resist the encroachments of the French, they were jealous of any abridg- 
ment of those rights which were heirlooms from their fathers, and the 
birthright of their children. The colonies had that feeling of respect 
for England which naturally came from the position she occupied as a 
sovereign power among the nations of the world, as being the Mother 
which had given them permission to live and take care of themselves, to 
be obedient to the governors sent out to them, and humble petitioners 
before the throne. Tf they felt pride in England, it was subdued by the 
bitter memories of the past ; and, when reproached for lack of filial love, 
they recounted the long years of sorrow and distress, the smarting of the 
lash of persecution which had driven their fathers from the maternal roof. 

They knew that the spirit within them, which resented English ex- 
action, was born of the blood of martyrs. Their dying wails still rang 
in their ears, and they seemed impressed with the very sense of their 
presence around them. They remembered the terrible throes of anguish 
out of which the Protestant religion had come, as they perused the pages 



74 

of their Scriptures, blotted by the tears of sainted mothers. They 
were inspired with eternal vigilance as the safeguard of their liberties, 
and they became as watchmen upon towers, lest their rights should be 
subverted. 

Discussion is the agitation which stirs the mud at the bottom of the 
stream of popular thought, and eventuates in crystal sentiment. Every 
act of England in regard to colonial matters, was the subject of discussion 
here, and every aggression upon their rights met the remonstrance of the 
people. Revolution was the natural sequence of an effort to enforce 
compliance with obnoxious laws, which plainly portended the destruction 
of colonial rights, or independence from British power. 

In her conduct towards the colonies, England was true to herself. As 
a nation, the English are proverbially selfish. It has well been said of 
the genius of England, it cares little for abstract liberty, but it will defend 
its liberties to the death. '•' It cares little for the rights of man, but for the 
rights of English man, it will fight till from its bones the flesh be 
hacked." 

Edmund Burke, eloquent in defence of colonial rights, and appreciating 
with a keen sense the power and spirit of our people, whilst expressing 
scorn at presuming to the right to tax the colonies, significantly added: 
u So has a man a right to shear a wolf." Let it never be forgotten that 
the cause of our fathers against England was rooted in their hearts and 
kindled the fires of war, not because they were unable to comply with her 
demands, but because obedience was acquiescence in, and acknowledg- 
ment of, her right to unlimited exaction. 

The emergency to which the Bostonians were found equal in drawing 
so much English breakfast tea in the cold waters of Massachusetts Bay, 
was but a faint indication of that terrible determination at the hearts of 
these men. 

With all the facilities of to-day for the interchange of thought, for the 
transmission of intelligence, for the transportation of armies and general 
travel, what would be our condition at this moment were we deprived of 
these great blessings, and, in this respect, placed as our fathers were in 
this verv town one hundred years ago 1 A resolution of the citizens of 
this town to-day can be read in Congress in ten minutes afterwards. Then 
the most rapid means known would fail t7> lay it before that body at 
Philadelphia in less than four days. To-day, were Boston menaced by 
an enemv, to-morrow Berkshire county would parade her militia on Bos- 
ton Common. A hundred years ago it consumed from ten days to two 
weeks to summon and receive aid from this town ; and even then the 
patriot soldier would come to the front wearied and foot-sore. When 
President Lincoln sounded the alarm and called the nation to arms, 
in less than forty-eight hours Massachusetts soldiers were in the streets 



75 

of Baltimore, returning the rebel fire as they hastened to the imperilled 
capital. 

Maine, at the commencement of the struggle in 1775, was a province of 
Massachusetts, with a few settlements on the largest rivers ; dense forests 
covered the interior, and, to a great extent, the frontier of what is now a 
prosperous State. Vermont and New Hampshire were scantily settled at 
various places. Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island were com- 
paratively thickly settled for those days. What is now the centre of the 
great State of New York, was then a mere hunting-ground of the savage ; 
Niagara was a British post ; a few fortifications extended along the 
thickly-wooded regions of Lake Champlain and Lake George ; Albany 
was a small city, and the City of New York, which now has its million of 
souls, was bounded by the City Hall Park, and the East and North rivers. 
New Jersey, destined to be the theatre of several campaigns, and ravaged 
by friend and foe, was as powerful as any colony of no greater extent of 
territory. Pennsylvania, rich in mineral as well as in agricultural pro- 
ductions, was fast developing herself; but, like New York, her rivers moved 
ceaselessly among forests in the centre and western part of the State, and 
most of her valleys and hills were yet in their natural wildness. The 
same was true of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, 
and, to a great extent, of Maryland and Delaware. An immense seaboard 
stretching from Maine to Georgia, dotted here and there by new-born 
cities and growing villages, wa.s unprotected by forts or fortifications ; 
mighty rivers, the channels of communication with the interior, were 
bordered with well-cultivated fields, but infant colonies could not be 
expected to have raised along their banks fortifications to overlook their 
waters, and oppose the passage of hostile fleets. To fell the forest, subdue 
the soil, build houses, maintain schools for the education of their children, 
and defend them against the attacks of the stealthy and merciless savage, 
had constantly taxed the utmost exertions of the early settlers of these 
States. 

It is true that, in 1775, Daniel Boone had penetrated to Kentucky, 
and, before the termination of the Revolution, a few pioneers returned to 
take part in the final struggle which ended the long contest. A few 
travellers had explored, but migration had not as yet commenced to the 
central and most fertile part of our country. This vast region, which now 
comprises Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and all beyond, was then a wilderness 
and the home of the savage. 

Three million souls comprised the entire population of these infant 
colonies, and upon them was cast the burden of a war, which should 
shape the destiny of the world. 

Lexington, which, a year ago, celebrated with appropriate honors the 
centennial of the bloody scenes enacted on her historic fields on the 19th 



76 

day of April, 1775, suddenly became the theatre of war. Then, for the 
first time, the reality of battle stunned the senses of the peaceful colonists, 
as they saw their fathers, sons and brothers falling 1 in death before the 
fire of British soldiers. A momentary pause followed the rattle of 
musketry, and then on flying feet from every side came the avenging 
yeomanry, whose swift and fatal fire brought havoc and destruction on 
the hostile force, and ended in their complete discomfiture and rout. 

The immediate effect of resort to arms to enforce obedience, was to 
unite and harmonize the discordant views of the colonists upon ques- 
tions of policy, and concentrate their action as to the means of defence. 
Party animosities and personal rancor are often swallowed up and lost 
sight of, in moments of great impending danger. 

The main question before ttie country was, How shall the issue be 
met ? Shall it be a war of resistance only, or shall the battle be waged 
for the sovereignty of the colonies as independent States °? Shall we strike 
and sever allegiance to the crown, or resist until the crown complies with 
our demands ? And for a moment, let us calmly look to the chances of 
success as the field lay before our patriot fathers a hundred years ago, 
remembering that life is ever teaching the proneness of children born 
to fortune, to forget the labor and self-denial by which it was amassed, to 
lightly value and waste in prodigality the heritage from their fathers. 

In all the undertakings of life, the good-will of men accelerates the 
labor, and gives warrant of success. Remember that 

'' 'Tis a common proof 
That lowliness is young ambition's ladder, 
Whereto the climber upwards turns his face; 
But, when he once attains the upmost, 
He then unto the ladder turns his back, 
Looks in the clouds, scorning the base degrees 
By which he did ascend." 

Remember that he who commences life at the upmost round, lacks that 
schooling of which experience is the unrelenting master, and too often 
ignores the cost of present blessings, and, stumbling, falls a victim to his 
own folly. To-day, in the vastness of power, we lose sight of the swad- 
dling-clothes of early life, and forget the cradle in which our liberties 
were rocked ! In manhood we forget the weakness of youth, and the 
nurture and care by which its strength has been attained. A few of the 
dark forebodings of the hour crowd in upon the mind to-day, to kindle 
for the patriot dead, in more resplendent hues, the halo of glory which 
encircles their memory. 

But where was the good-will of nations when the colonies struck for 
national life ? The great powers of the world were hostile to revolution, 
and the enemies of Democracy. Around the thrones of emperors and 
kings bristled the bayonets by which they were upheld. The freedom 



77 

of men bore that semblance of reality that the fleshless skeleton does to 
the living- being- in the roundness of health and the glow of life. If 
sympathy should come, it was most likely to come from those who most 
needed it themselves. If disaster followed their efforts at last, their cause 
would sink with no friendly hand outreached to save them from the ocean 
of destruction. The monarchists were everywhere in the ascendant, and 
popular will, wherever it had sought expression, had been crushed under 
the iron heel of despotism. If alliance with foreign powers were made, 
and aid thus obtained, it would result from hatred to England, rather 
than from love for them. 

Love and hatred are two strong elements in human character, but are 
of little account in shaping the policy of nations. 

For centuries, history was replete with the struggles of nations and 
peoples for freedom, with scarcely an example of triumph, but a painful 
record of failures. Switzerland, with the natural protection of her 
impassable barriers, was simply a gem of light in Alpine setting, as cold 
and unsympathizing as the glaciers in her mountains. In the centre of 
despotic Europe, she was isolated from commercial relations with the 
outer world, and could only cheer others by the recorded deeds of her 
daring leaders. 

Poland, long the field of bitter strife, vexed and harassed by internal 
feuds, encouraged and fostered by the intrigues of neighboring powers, 
was in the final throes of death. The bravery of her people, the devotion 
and skill of her leaders, could not withstand treachery, and the combined 
efforts of Russia, Prussia and Austria against her life. Her armies were 
decimated, her generals driven into exile, and lamentation heard through 
her borders. The spirit of her people, if unconquered, was wasted against 
the superior force which crushed their power. As a nation, she was 
dismembered and divided as spoil among her despoilers. The grasp of 
Russia upon her has never relaxed. Her star, from its once proud 
eminence in the galaxy of nations in the East, has fallen into utter 
darkness ; but, as it sunk in night above the smoke of battle, another 
suddenly ascended the western horizon, resplendent with the rays of 
hope for the oppressed of all nations, — even now, thank God ! for the 
poor African. 

Scotland had recently been the scene of two rebellions against the 
unity of that ancient kingdom with England and Ireland, designed to 
restore the throne to the line of Stuarts, which had ended with the execu- 
tion of Mary Queen of Scots by order of Elizabeth of England. 

Each had been quickly suppressed, and Scotland, — the land of the 
achievements of Sir William Wallace and Robert Bruce ; the home of Sir 
Walter Scott and Robert Burns, bards of immortal verse and song, — still 
remains au integral part of the British Empire. 



78 

The ancient kingdom of Ireland, which archaeologists claim antedates 
the Christian era, for many centuries had lost her sovereignty as a 
nation. With bitter hatred for England, with devotion and love for the 
Green Island of their birth, the Irish had, again and again, smitten the 
shackles of their thraldom, and battled for liberty. 

The blood and lives of the noblest sons of Ireland had been sacrificed 
upon the altar of then- country, but, alas ! her leaders, whom Moloch had 
spared, were in exile, her green flag in the dust, and her harp on the 
willows. 

But, against all this, it was urged that Europe was the scene of great 
political commotions. That the agitations foreboding the shaking of 
thrones, and the movements of armies, in which Napoleon Bonaparte was 
destined to become a chief actor, had already commenced ; and that the 
nations of the East were too busy in watching each' other to divide their 
attention by taking action here. That England herself had grave inter- 
ests to guard nearer home, which were paramount to any she had here ; 
and that the opportune moment had come for decisive action, on their 
part, by a Declaration of Independence. 

It was urged that the English themselves were not a unit against 
them ; that the justice of their complaints, that the eloquence of Fox, Pitt, 
Burke and Lord Camden in behalf of the American cause, had taken a 
strong hold upon the public mind then, and would weaken the efforts of 
the crown to subject them by force of arms. 

The course of events proved how false the hope such words inspired. 
Yet, to the immortal names of the men of England, who then espoused 
our cause against the storm of scorn from the imperial host, let America 
to-day and forever do honor. To such men as Fox, Pitt, Burke and 
Camden, the hearts of our fathers went out with unspeakable gratitude 
whilst they lived ; and we, their children's children, to-day standing by the 
urn of their sacred ashes, counting the falling grains from the shock of 
time, honor them as the champions of our liberties in a hostile court; the 
defenders of our rights in the British Parliament where we were unrepre- 
sented, and steadfast friends when the battle raged. 

England may pride herself upon the illustrious names of her statesmen, 
but around the names of these men is an imperishable lustre, which will 
never fade from the pages of English history. The work which comes 
from the heart to elevate mankind and relieve the oppressed, is born of 
God, and never dies, And these statesmen, although now dead to the 
dull sense of sight, as ages roll by, will become as speaking oracles to 
men and nations, more real than Delphic gods to the ancients, in ages 
past. 

Philadelphia, now holding the central attraction of the world, soon to 
appropriately celebrate with august honors the Centennial of our National 



79 

birth, will be recreant to a duty which we owe, not only to the memory 
of our English friends iu 1776, but to a duty which, in 1876, we owe 
to England herself, if upon that occasion she shall fail to wreathe with 
laurel the unspeaking marble chiselled into the likeness of these illustrious 
Englishmen. 

Lord Camden upon the floor of Parliament uttered these memorable 
words in the house of Lords : " My position is this, — I repeat it, I will 
maintain it to my last hour, — taxation and representation are inseparable. 
This position is founded in the laws of nature. It is more, it is itself an 
eternal law of nature. For, whatever is man's own, is absolutely his own ; 
no man has a right to take it from him without his own consent. Who- 
mever attempts it, attempts an injury ; whoever does it, commits a robbery," 

The wavering among the colonists were told that victory was seldom 
due to numerical strength. They had before them the example of 
Leonidas of Sparta, with his little band turning back the van of the army 
of Xerxes of 3,000,000 men, as it sought entrance into Greece. They 
were pointed to the victories of Alexander of Macedon, who, with 40,000 
disciplined men, defeated and routed 3,000,000 Persians in battle, as show- 
ing that victory comes from vigilance, discipline, activity and bravery. 

They were pointed to the extent of their country, the fertility of her 
soil, and the advantages they would have as defenders over an invading 
army in such a land. 

It then became a serious question whether all the colonies would unite 
in the common purpose, and stand by each other to the last in the trying 
ordeal of a long and bitter war. Was the heart of the people deeply set 
in the cause of liberty, from a controlling sense of duty and love for 
the cause they had espoused ; or, was the clamor a hasty expression of 
feeling, likely to subside when maturely considered with the realities of 
war actually upon them ? 

A Declaration of Independence was one thing, and independence 
quite another. A Declaration of Independence to the nations of the 
world would be an idle proclamation, and a disgrace to the men who 
signed it, unless it was made effective by the unflinching will of the 
people in concerted and harmonious action. 

These werf grave questions, maturely considered in the Continental 
Congress then in session, and the legislative halls of the several colonies. 
There were in those bodies men who deemed allegiance to the British 
crown paramount to the cause of liberty. The eloquence of the 
statesmen of 1776 will not be likely to be equalled by any oratory of 
their sons in 1876. The masterly power of human eloquence in rousing the 
energies and firing the souls of men to action, if equalled, was never sur- 
passed before nor since the days of the American Revolution. The time 
for action had come. The season was auspicious, a nation was to be born, 



80 
and the terrible ordeal of travail through blood and death onlv could bring? 

o -a 

it to life. 

God filled the souls of men with patriotic zeal ; the hopeful assured the 

weak-hearted with courage. The logic of such men as Otis, Henry, Lee, 

and hosts of others, was unanswerable. Their words seemed to glow 

with the spirit of power, and men were controlled at the will of patriot 

statesmen in the good old days of 1776. Then from centre to border, 

from border to centre, in no uncertain tone went the voice of the people. 

It was heard from colony to colony, from city to city, from town to 

hamlet, and from hamlet to town. Virginia heard the angry voice of 

New England above the storm of battle and the smoke of her burnino- 

o a 

villages, and answered back with shouts for liberty. Then came the 
hardy sons of Sheffield together, laying aside the implements of husbandry 
to say to Congress that, for the cause of freedom and independence, tbey 
would on demand yield up, not only all their worldly possessions, but 
their lives upon the altar of their country. 

The will of the people is the supreme law of any land. It was the 
will of the people that the colonies should be declared independent States, 
and these States one people among the nations of the world. 

Their representatives accordingly disclosed it, and unfurled the banner 
of the nation, and spangled it with the stars of hope. To recite now 
the history of that long struggle which commenced in 1775, and finally 
ended in 1782, would be an unnecessary weariness to you who are famil- 
iar with those memorable events which transpired in the darkest hours 
of American history, and, now that they are past, make the pages which 
record them, of the deepest interest to us. The heroism of the people 
during those years has never been surpassed. War not only lays waste 
countries, destroys towns and villages, but makes desolated households. 

It is the last resort of nations. When shall it cease forever, and men and 
nations live in the light of that better day"? What discourse on the ways 
of man his deeds suggest, to one who feels for human suffering ! Did 
fiends engraft the parent-stock with evils to entwine and choke a better 
growth, that man now hates his fellow? Why should the human heart 
bear parasites to sting and kill the fruit of noble purpose ? When kings 
make war, their chariots override the slain, and. mangled flesh and human 
gore mark the way to victory ; ambition feasts her thirsty soul, and 
avarice, ever gaunt and unsatisfied, gluts and crams her maw with the 
ill-gotten gains of conquest. O kings of men and conquerors of men ! 
are these true deeds of glory ? 

" Deeds ! miserable delusion of men's pride ! Deeds ! Cities sacked, 
fields ravaged, hearths profaned, men butchered ! In your hour of doom, 
behold the deeds you boast of: from rank showers of blood and the red 
light of blazing roofs, you build the rainbow of glory, and to shuddering 



81 

conscience cry, Lo ! the bridge to Heaven !" And yet war must come, 
but woe ! woe ! to those who, from sceptred thrones or places of power, 
for the glory of triumph lead nations into its terrible vortex, where no 
vital principle or question of right underlies the quarrel. 

But war must rage, men must fight, and sorrow and desolation come, 
when principles vital to nations are to be sacrificed, unless rescued by 
this terrible means. And so, through long years of suffering and priva- 
tions, which to-day we cannot realize, the nation was led by those invinci- 
ble men at the head of state and armies into the light of peace. 

Upon Washington devolved the task of organizing and disciplining 
troops unaccustomed to the field, and unschooled in the tactics of armies. 
With the little means at hand the magnitude of the work done surpasses 
comprehension. To the women of those days is largely due a meed of 
praise for the noble part they performed upon the field, in the camp, in 
hospitals and at home, for the cause of their country. Indeed, without 
their busy hands at the flying wheel, the singing spindle, and clanking 
loom, without their care of the sick and wounded, and cheer to their hus- 
bands, sons, and brothers, the cause of liberty here had died a hundred 
years ago, and we still would be the vassals of England. 

It requires no strong faith to satisfy me that, were the necessity again 
upon us, the women of to-day would show themselves worthy daughters 
of their noble mothers of 1776, and would exchange their brocades and 
satins for the homespun goods of those days, and proudly learn the indus- 
tries of their mothers at the loom and wheel. 

True, the days for such work have gone, yet it is of peculiar interest 
now to learn how such work was done ; and when during the late war we 
held a fair in Brooklyn, and raised nearly $500,000 for the Sanitary Com- 
mission, a few of us New Englanders — and, by the way, we have a great 
many in Brooklyn — opened a New-England kitchen, and we found plenty 
of ladies who quickly donned the costumes of one hundred years ago, and 
made the old wheels and spindles sing again, and the flax made yarn from 
the distaffs as their mothers had taught them: and we thus added $40,000 
to that most excellent charity. 

Against the defeats at Long Island, Brandywine and before Charleston, 
were the victories at Saratoga, Princeton, Trenton and York town. 

Alliance with France at last made haste the clay of peace. When 
peace was finally declared in the early part of 1783, the total population 
of the States was a little under three millions of people. The total area 
of our territory was about 800,000 square miles. To-day the population 
of the nation cannot be less than forty-five millions, and the area of our 
territory upwards of three millions of square miles. Then our western 
boundary did not extend beyond the Mississippi, but now the national 
domain is bounded east and west by the great oceans of the adobe. 



82 

What the total value of the real and personal estate of the nation- 
aggregated at the close of the Revolution, we are not able to state, for no 
census was then taken. There was one element of wealth, however, which 
no census could have returned, or human being value. When the 
confederation of our States had been finally effected, and men saw and 
knew we were destined to remain one people, with a common flag and 
common army and navy to carry it, and that flag symbolized the 
principles enunciated by the Declaration of Independence, and vouch- 
safed to every human being, who should come under its protection, the 
enjoyment of all rights in accordance with those principles, the govern- 
ment itself was a source of wealth beyond the sanguine expectations of 
the zealots who created it. 

Here was a vast continent which, for some wise purpose, as we now 
begin to comprehend, had been left unknown to civilized man from 
creation's dawn to the close of the fifteenth century, embracing within its 
vast expanse a soil unsurpassed in fertility, with rivers large enough for 
ships to carry the commerce of the world, with lakes like inland oceans, 
with mineral wealth exhaustless, with fruits and timbers great in variety, 
superior in quality and in ample abundance, and with climates unequalled ; 
and this immense country was now opened to the world, with these 
inducements to men to come and make this their home. Here could 
come the refugees and exiles, the oppressed and over- worked from the 
crowded cities and countries of the East, and not be foreigners, but 
citizens, and feel that here at last was a home for all men ; where every 
man could say, I am a citizen, and my rights, no matter how poor or weak 
I may be, are vouchsafed to me and my children forever. 

That gateway of nations, the Atlantic, for a hundred years has been 
like a beaten highway, with its living freight of human souls, hastening 
here, as if to the land of promise. 

"Thrice happy land, where he who flies 
From the dark ills of other skies, 
From scorn, and want's unnerving woes, 
Here shelters him in proud repose." 

Study, now, the history of nations, their growth, power, and extent, and 
compare them with our own: and how far have we outstripped the 
fleetest ! The sudden growth of power here was destined to be made 
effective early in the present century, by another declaration of war with 
Great Britain, in 1812, and resulted from a series of aggressions by her 
naval vessels, in blockading our ports, and searching our vessels during 
the struggle between that power and France. 

Three years more of war, and peace again came with Great Britain, 
which, although often threatened, has never been broken. 

Although the limits of such an address as this must, of necessity, be 



S3 

small, it would lack, and especially upon such an occasion, a great essential 
to completeness, did it fail to bring before us some statistics which show 
where the responsibility rests for the long existence of that national dis- 
honor, human slavery, which has at last been wiped out in blood, and 
atoned for in national tribulation and sorrow. Far be it from me to 
delight in opening anew the deep wounds of the past, which, in time, will 
finally heal. But I am on old Massuchusetts soil again, in my native 
town, where, a hundred years ago, the citizens made a record which shall 
be a pride to their posterity for ages yet to come ; and one hundred 
years hence, when others yet unborn shall gather here, to commemorate 
their acts, let our, words to-day show that, of this generation of men, 
not all have been willing fellows in the rank bed of human slavery. 

Slavery is a relic of barbarism, older than civilization ; older than any 
history, unless the Mosaic, and is maintained upon the principle that 
might makes right. " Might makes right ! " A more monstrous assertion 
never found human utterance, and, bad as it is, it is the best justification 
that ever was given for slavery, which John Wesley characterized as the 
sum of all villanies. 

The first cargo of slaves had been imported into Virginia before the 
landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, and slavery was an institu- 
tion fixed and established hy direct encouragement from England, long 
before the revolutionary struggle commenced. 

At that time the colonies held in human bondage a half a million of 
African negroes, which then proved a source of great weakness in 
that struggle. 

Slavery had its stronghold in the Southern States. None of the thirteen 
original states are without the disgrace of once having been the home of 
slaves. Such men as Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, John Adams, 
and James Otis, saw and realized that the abstract principles of right, for 
which they so ably contended, were more than surface-deep, and that 
when they came to the question of freedom or slavery, if it turned upon 
the complexion of men, it was no principle at all, and a question of color 
only. And Thomas Jefferson, in drafting the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence, in the original, made use of very pointed allusions to our English 
cousins, who have often found great satisfaction in making invidious 
comparisons between England and ourselves, with all of our boasted 
freedom. Cowper said : „ 

" Slaves cannot breathe the air of England. 
Receive her air, that moment they are free ; 
They touch our country, and their shackles fall." 

Jefferson said, in his indictment of King George III : " Determined 
to keep open a market where men shall be bought and sold, he has 
prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to 



84 

prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce ; and that this assemblage 
of horrors might want no fact of distinguished dye, he is now exciting 
those very people to rise in arms among us, and purchase that liberty 
of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he 
has obtruded them, thus paying off former crimes committed against the 
liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit 
against the life of another." This clause, said Jefferson, was struck out 
in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who still desired to con- 
tinue the importation of slaves. 

Thus early we find the leading statesmen of those days charging 
England with responsibility for the crime of slavery here, but South 
Carolina showing her cloven foot, and exposing thus early the secret of 
that bitter hatred which she has ever entertained for Massachusetts. 

In 1790, the census showed slaves to be held as follows : — 



New Hampshire, - 


158 


Maryland, 


103,030 


Vermont, 


17 


Virginia, 


- 293,427 


Rhode Island, 


952 


North Carolina, 


100,572 


Connecticut, 


2,759 


South Carolina, 


- 107,094 


New York, 


21,324 


Georgia, 


29,264 


New Jersey, 


- 11,423 


Kentucky, 


- 11,830 


Pennsylvania, 


3,437 


Tennessee, 


3,417 


Delaware, 


3,887 


Massachusetts, 


None 



Massachusetts wiped out the last vestige of it in 1780, except such as 
existed when poor fugitives from bondage were taken from the hands of 
her outraged citizens, by United States authorities, and delivered up to 
their masters. Pennsylvania had provided for gradual emancipation in 
17S0, also. It is interesting reading now to occasionally glance at the 
statistics of Revolutionary days, and see what part New England per- 
formed in that contest. It is of interest to us to-day, now that we are 
speaking of results obtained by that war, to know what part these 
Southern States took in the establishment of that government which 
they undertook to overthrow and destroy, in 1861. 

In that war, Massachusetts furnished 83,162 men, whilst the entire 
seven Southern States, including Maryland, Delaware, and Virginia, 
furnished only 64,876, being less, by 18,186 men, than Massachusetts 
furnished alone. And do not suppose that this was because Massachusetts 
was more populous, for they far exceeded her in population. Virginia, 
North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, had a greater population 
than all New England then, and New England furnished far more than 
double the number of men those States furnished, to gain the liberty ol 
the nation. 

These facts, gathered from what are deemed reliable sources, need no 
comment. They are too potent to be met. And what makes them 
monuments of honor to New England is, that, early in the contest, her 



85 

soil was found uncomfortable battle-fields for the enemy, and the conflict 
raged farther south, with better success to the invading forces. 

In saying these things, I seek not to disparage the South, for I honor and 
love the names of the men she has furnished to the nation and the world. 
Virginia, the birthplace of so many presidents, may well be proud of the 
boon she has conferred upon nations and men ; for the truly great and good 
belong to the whole world, rather than to one nation or age. 

It is fair and just to-day, in reviewing the work of the nation, to show 
that the merit of men, people, and states, is held in just remembrance by 
the living. Let me, then, say, that sin, in whatever form it exists, 
gathers strength as it grows, and that familiarity with vice begets, in 
man's heart, the mantle with which he covers it from the reproaches 
of conscience. 

The fallacious reasoning of men, whereby they satisfied themselves that 
slavery was no crime, and that it was a boon to the heathen, for this 
slight recompense, to bring them into the light of Christian love, was 
strong enough to withstand more Christian arguments, when directed to 
men whose ears and hearts were closed and deaf to all appeal. As we 
look back now upon the field over which the storm has passed, and 
observe the slow and steady growth of public sentiment for and against 
this institution, the means by which it was kept alive and in power, 
and the final culmination of the question, as to its future growth, in the 
decisive voice of the people at the ballot-box, we learn impressive lessons 
of the growth and power of truth, and gather fresh hope of the final 
destiny of man. 

The very moment immorality has a commercial value, that instant it 
becomes potential. Men will aid and abet it in secret, and, as it becomes 
stronger, it assumes an air of respectability, and obtrudes itself among the 
decencies of men. 

To maintain a balance of power, Texas, Avith all her slaves, was 
annexed, and became a State in the Union. The war with Mexico, 
whereby we became possessed of vast territories of incalculable wealth, 
was really waged more in the interest of slavery than most people sup- 
posed, and was designed to extend our territory south of a vacillating line 
which, by compromise, fixed its northern limit. Then came the long and 
bitter struggle to keep its awful blight from the new territories, and 
Kansas and Nebraska were opened to competition between the champions 
of slavery at the South, and the lovers of all mankind at the North. 
These are now historic matters, and we blush to-day, as we glance back 
and recall the shameful scenes of murder and rapine which followed the 
application of the doctrine of squatter sovereignty to our territories. 

Out of that struggle to rescue those territories from the grasp of slavery j 
to protect Northern pioneers from border ruffians, swarming in from the 



86 

South, and particularly from Missouri, came one whose zeal, faith, cour- 
age, and fate, have inseparably connected him with the history of those 
days. John Brown was the sixth in lineal descent from Peter Brown, who 
came over in the Mayflower. He was what the world terms a fanatic. 
Probably not one person in ten thousand approved of the insane project 
of instigating insurrection among the slaves of Virginia, with a view to 
their emancipation by force of arms. He was of that stock of men whose 
very nature was at war with slavery. He hated sin and crime in any form, 
and, above all, he abhorred human slavery, as a crime which no law or 
earthly power could, make right. He stood upon an elevation above 
the reach of man. He was of those whose blood had marked the way 
from bondage to freedom, for centuries past, to culminate in liberty for 
him and his posterity, but in slavery to the negro. His work was not 
done until the shackles should fall from every slave in the land. As he 
saw his duty, he sprang to the task, regardless of fate or consequences. 

The blow he struck w r ith a dozen men shook the nation, and threw 
the entire Southern States in a paroxysm of rage, and the North into 
astonishment. 

The foolhardy enterprise caused universal derision. It was in violation 
of reason, as well as law ; and yet, when it was known that John Brown — 
the John Brown of Puritan stock, the John Brown of the Adirondacks, 
the old John Brown of Ossawattamie — was the man who was striking at 
Harper's Ferry, our hearts stood still, for we knew it was the earnest work 
of a fearless man, in obedience to what he deemed conscious duty. The 
outraged laws of Virginia ; the infuriated spirit of the Southern people, 
and the offended guardian angel of slavery, as a benign institution of the 
negro, alike demanded blood for blood, and old John Brown, with his 
comrades, died upon the gallows of Virginia. For him death had no ter- 
rors. He knew that the men who howled for his life would hasten the 
work of emancipation, by the shedding of his blood ; and from the day of 
his death until the close of the rebellion, his soul was marching on. The 
force of such a character as his, will be felt as long as the English lan- 
guage is spoken, or history records the story of his life. 

Neither selfishness nor ambition stained the purpose of his action. He 
saw duty above law, above constitutions. He lived — whether it be real or 
fancied, it was, nevertheless, real to him — in constant communion with a 
spirit that pervaded his soul, and pointed the way of duty. To him 
duty was a supreme law, binding upon conscience, and every step up his 
rugged pathway was a round attained on the ladder of life. John 
Brown is a figure, standing out in bold relief upon the age in which he 
lived. Upon the scroll of Time, ambition has written " Fame," in the red 
ink of human blood, but virtue has traced " Philanthropist," in letters of 
living light, over the names of men who, from love to their fellows, have 



S7 

struggled hard with the dark and stormy tides of man's evil passions ; 
have given battle to the elements themselves, to bridge the way from the 
prison-house of bondage to that liberty which God gave the weak, and 
the strong have wrested from them. 

The spectacle of a country growing with a rapidity unequalled in the 
annals of nations, whose government was pretended to be founded on the 
broad principles of equality to mankind ; at a race with the demon of 
human slavery within its own domain, was shameful in the eyes of 
despotism itself. Such a contest for ascendency was sure to result in 
blows. 

The most eloquent and intellectual statesmen, from the days of the 
Revolution down to the election of Abraham Lincoln, had dallied with the 
national sin; had compromised the principle of eternal justice to the 
demands of slavery, and died with ambition unsatisfied, and the record on 
otherwise stainless lives, blighted and blackened by the polluting contact. 
Columbia, the figurative goddess of our liberties, encircled her arms, in 
1776, around a sisterhood of thirteen States. Year by year the family 
circle was enlarged, and she welcomed to her ample bosom her new-born 
children, as members of the national household. Some came with 
tresses bathed in northern lakes. The solitudes of that immense region 
known as the West and the Northwest, were broken in upon by the 
transforming wand of civilization, and became States in the Union. 
Beyond the wide prairies, and the rocky summits of our western hills, even 
to the waters of the Pacific, as if by magic, the wilderness had been 
transformed to gardens of luxury; and new-born States, glittering with 
shekels from exhaustless mines of wealth, had knocked at the open door, 
'md joined the family circle. These States came with institutions and 
laws ; with churches and school-houses ; with intelligent and industrious 
people, akin to those of the New England States. And it is from New 
England that those noble pioneers went out who settled nearly all of the 
great free States, and shaped their policy in their infant days, saved them 
from the stain and curse of slavery, and sealed them to the cause of 
freedom. 

It was early seen by the men of New England that, comparatively speak- 
ing, the East must decrease, whilst the West must increase, in popula- 
tion, wealth, and consequent power. They saw their children plunge into 
the western wilderness, to make new homes. They knew that proper 
name of education was likely to be neglected, and that churches and 
schoolhouses would remain unbuilt in the headlong rush for riches which 
characterized the age. They knew that steady and vigorous growth, 
when education kept step with civilization, was scarcely to be expected. 

They saw and knew that the system of our government, by virtue of 
the elective franchise, was only safe in the hands of intelligent men. 



88 

That, when that great portion of our country should become rich and 
densely populated, and questions of vital importance to the nation and the 
world were to be passed upon, the unfriendly voice of the West, or an 
ignorant populace, would drown the voice of New England, and imperil 
the welfare of the nation. And right nobly have the rich men of the East 
given of their substance and wealth to the founding of colleges and 
schools 5 to sustaining and building churches : and this vast work has not 
been done by the rich alone. No, for a hundred years past, the men, 
women, and children of the East have gathered in, and sent all over the 
West, the means to educate the people. " Education ! Education ! Edu- 
cation ! " has been the unceasing voice of New England ; for she knew 
that education was not only the chart and compass to the ship of state, 
but the sheet-anchor of safety, when the storm should come. And oh, 
how well the work was done ! For, when the demon of slavery struck 
the union of these States, and sought to cleave asunder the temple of our 
liberties, it was no uncertain voice which answered the call to arms of the 
president from these great States of the Union. When the nation had 
walked through blood for four years, slavery went down and out forever, 
at the mouth of northern cannon •, at the point of the bayonet, in the 
hands of Union soldiers. The old ship of state, freighted with great 
interest of mankind, torn and racked, rested at last in the haven of peace, 
and then our hearts went up to our God, — the God of the slave, — that 
our fathers had made her keel of oak, and her ribs of steel ! 

If God, in his providence, ever scourged a people for sin, he did ours. 
And oh, to-day, as we stand above the dea'd years of the dying century, 
with faces turned to the unfolding cycle, where are those who thought to 
save the Union of the American people with the unbroken shackles of 
five million bondmen ? Until President Lincoln, as a necessity of war, 
and as an act of justice to the slave, decreed emancipation, the battle 
was against us ; but when the sword smote the leprous curse of the 
nation, and the clank of falling chains was heard from Texas to Maryland, 
the South waned, and the North waxed strong, for justice was satisfied, 
and the God of our fathers was in the battle. There is peace at home, 
peace at the South, peace and quiet on the green banks of the Potomac, 
peace on a hundred battle-fields, peace in the graves of a million men 
who sleep in death, as the noble sacrifice of the people for a nation's sin. 
With all its cost of sorrow, toil, suffering, bloodshed, and loss of life and 
treasure, who would have the work undone which saved the nation to 
itself, to the world, and to God ? 

We are free at last from national sin ; and, as we gird our loins, and 
bury the dead past, with its bitterness and errors, we lay our hands to the 
industries of life, and study the ways of peace, and the good-will of all 
mankind. 



S9 

Now that a hundred years have passed, and we here take breath upon 
the threshold of another, what is the record of the waning century of 
our great work, as one among the nations of the world ? We have not 
done our best, and yet we blush not for tasks we have accomplished. 

We started with advantages which others could not have. We started 
at the crowning-point of the age in arts and sciences ; with the wisdom of 
the past for our guidance, and the raw material at hand, to be shaped at 
will, for future piyposes. 

The growth of men from barbarism to civilization, in the full enjoy- 
ment of what our fathers possessed at starting, is never accomplished in a 
single life, unless at infancy the child is transplanted from the forest of 
ignorance into the garden of civilization and learning. And even then, 
it is seldom that wild stock will bear the pruning and culture incident to 
such change, to make it productive of fruit. It has taken six thousand 
years for man to grow from nakedness and destitution to the superior 
being we now find him, of science, art, refinement, law, government, 
comfort, and abundance of intellectual discipline and literary culture. 

This nation is cosmopolitan. No other nation of the world, in this 
respect, resembles it. The crossing of the higher types of mankind has 
been found to increase the vigor of its physical and intellectual growth. 
The result of such commingling of the races and nationalities is not 
within the ken of human vision. 

A hundred years presage a future in which America shall produce a 
people superior to any the world has ever seen ! Few drones have come 
to this busy hive of men. The restless and dissatisfied with the sluggish- 
ness of the Old World come here, and find the field for mechanical, 
scientific, and intellectual labor, ample for their wishes. And the result 
has been that, in the hundred years past, with a population increasing 
from 300,000 to 4,500,000, against 1,200,000,000 on the rest of the 
globe, more than half of the really great discoveries in mechanics and 
arts are credited to the American people. The stupendous architecture 
of Egypt, the exquisite statuary of Greece, and the unrivalled paintings 
of Raphael, Michael Angelo, Correggio, and Titian, have not been 
equalled here. 

The bent of American genius has been more particularly directed to 
the labor-saving means that mechanism affords ; and yet the fine arts 
are not neglected, and the future is auspicious with bright promises for 
American artists. 

The Pyramids of Egypt still frown above the ashes of a people whose 
history was ancient when Abraham drove his flocks to the green banks of 
the Nile. No people has equalled the Egyptians in the massiveness, 
grandeur, or durability of their structures. "They combined sculpture 
with architecture, and grouped their Colossi and avenues of Sphinxes 



90 

into parts of one great design. The}' used historical paintings, fading, by 
insensible degrees, into hieroglyphics on the one hand, and sculpture on 
the other, linking the whole together with the highest class of phonetic 
utterance, and with the most brilliant coloring ; thus harmonizing all 
these arts into one great whole, unsurpassed by anything the world 
has ever seen, during the three thousand years which have passed 
since the brilliant days of the Pharaohs." 

These monuments of art still stand in awful grandeur, the relics of 
past ages, whilst Isis and Osiris, and the people who worshipped them, 
have disappeared in the unbreaking night of ages past. 

We live in what may appropriately be called the Iron Age, although it 
is said to have long since passed. " Iron is reason's right hand; the use 
of it is the handmaid of art, and the mother of civilization." It is the 
indispensable instrument in the hands of genius to advance the conditions 
of mankind, and is perceptibly binding nations into more harmonious 
relations with each other. 

A nation's civilization is guaged by its attainments in arts and sciences. 
Its wealth expands as they increase. 

The temple of science had its foundation at creation's dawn. Its base 
is as broad as the universe, and its dome pierces the realms of infinity. 
Its intricate chambers are stored with unperishing riches. We are 
commanded to unlock her hidden mysteries, and bring them to the 
knowledge of man. We are as yet at the steps of the portal. As man 
ascends the winding stairway, he is lost in the maze of wonders that open 
to his senses ; and the trump which sounds the knell of time, will find 
him far below the pinnacle that completes the structure. 

This is a nation of peace. It is our policy to disband armies, and 
reduce our navy to the lowest degree consistent with safety. Whilst 
studying the arts of peace, we have sought diligently for that knowledge 
which elevates ami blesses our race. 

God has poured wealth upon us in ample abundance and increasing 
streams. In 1850, the nation's wealth aggregated $7,135,780,228 ; 
in 1860. $16,150,616,668; and, in 1870, it amounted to the enormous 
sum of $30,068,518,507. 

The imposing grandeur of this nation, its broad domain, its wealth, 
intelligence, and population, founded upon the broad principles of demo- 
cracy, has not been without its effects upon the world at large. Power 
commands respect, and an intelligence will enforce it. 

As a nation, it is our policy to follow the sagacious advice of Washing- 
ton, in his farewell address to his countrymen, and to beware of entangling 
alliances. 

But it is not becoming to a humane people to close their eyes to the 
wants of others. The American people, as individuals, cannot fairly be 



91 

charged with lack of sympathy to any cry of distress. Sympathy is cheap, 
and should characterize our conduct as a nation. 

Our sympathy, as a nation, should not be hidden from the knowledge of 
the world, when the weak and oppressed are struggling for their rights 
against impositions of the strong. A kind face, to one in distress, is like 
breaking sunlight in the darkness of night. 

Almost within sight of our shores, for years past, the island of Cuba has 
been the scene of horrible butcheries, perpetrated by brutal commanders 
upon prisoners taken from the patriots struggling to free that island from 
the oppressive dominion of Spain. 

The faces of those patriots have long been turned to us ; and it would 
seem that humanity, if not policy, called for some emphatic expression 
from this nation, in regard to the course pursued towards the prisoners there 
taken by the Spanish forces. That influence which comes from our con- 
scious strength, has everywhere weakened the force of despotism. We 
are cordially disliked by the great mass of English aristocracy. Much 
as slavery is distasteful to them, when the blood}' work of carving a 
Southern Confederacy out of the American Union was being tried, where 
was the sympathy of that great freedom-loving people, the aristocracy of 
England ? 

They knew that human slavery was the corner-stone of the proposed 
nation at the South, and still the controlling voice of England was with 
them, from the beginning to the end of the contest. 

They permitted cruisers to be built, and go out to ravage our com- 
merce on the seas, and we fought English cannon and rifles' in the 
Confederate army. The Geneva award is a complete justification of 
our arraignment of England, but is a small compensation for the actual 
injury she inflicted. 

The effort of the late Emperor of France to establish an empire on 
the ruins of a sister republic, was as fash a folly as to seek to bolster 
his tottering throne by conquest across the Rhine. We love the French, 
as our old friends in the hour of need, and we revere the memory of 
Lafayette, as a champion of our liberties, and a bosom-friend of the 
Father of his Country. In a hundred years France has been a kingdom, 
a republic, an empire, a kingdom, a republic, an empire, and now a 
republic again. We sympathetically and sincerely say for that noble, 
yet war-ridden nation, "Long live the Republic !' ; 

Russia, our old and honored friend, has been with us at heart in darkest 
hours. Her emperor has shown to the world that " the pen is mightier 
than the sword," and his fiat, justice to the enslaved, has liberated 
every serf in his empire. We have witnessed, with deepest sorrow, the 
defeat of the Hungarians in their patriotic efforts to regain a national 
supremacy ; and, although overcome by superior force, the wisdom of 



92 

Austria is being shown, in elevating her to more equable relations with 
that empire. 

The vast achievement of this nation, in connecting the Atlantic with 
the Pacific Ocean by railway communication, has seemingly changed the 
great Celestial Empire, in her commercial relations, from the east to the 
western part of our globe. The barriers which China and Japan, for so 
many centuries, interposed to intercourse with other nations, have been, in. 
a great degree, broken down, and 400,000,000 of people can now look 
beyond the limits of those immense empires. 

The English should be our best and warmest friends. They have 
with us a common language, and common interests, which should perpetu- 
ate our amicable relations. Take them all in all, they are the noblest 
people on earth, and have done more, by reason of their superior intelli- 
gence, indomitable perseverance, and great enterprise, for the world at 
large, than any other nation on the globe. Proud as she is, her pride 
should not do violence to her better judgment, if her offspring shall 
speedily surpass her in all that ennobles a nation and makes it great. 
Commerce is the far-reaching arm of nations. It has penetrated the 
ramifications of distant seas, and, in exploring the habitations of the 
heathen for merchandise, is making conquests for civilization among the 
most benighted of mankind. 

From an infant people, of small beginning, on the Atlantic coast, in a 
century we have strided a continent. The murmurings of primeval 
forests have been stilled by the woodman's axe, or drowned in the din of 
unceasing industries. We have not only made the subtile lightning 
obedient to our will, but the speaking-trump between men and nations. 
Our commercial arms are commingling our products with those of the 
nations of the East. They have laid hold upon the wealth of the 
Celestial Empire in the West, and our broad domain has become as well 
a great central mart, as a bridgeway to the commercial world. We are 
youthful, healthy, and strong. 

We are living in the golden age of reason. Never, since the Almighty 
gave the earth to man, has the dominion of reason so completely subjected 
matter to his will. What is our destiny, and what shall be the culmina- 
tion of our growth ? Nations grow old and pass away, and others build 
upon their ruins ; but this nation should live as long as the earth is 
the habitation of man. We are one people, with a common language 
and common interests. We possess a vast domain, dividing the great 
waters of the earth, ample for a population equal to that of the entire 
globe. 

The present is ours, the future is God's. Let us build with care upon 
the foundations our fathers laid ; and let our children, forever, woo wisdom 
and virtue, as goddesses twined the love of men and nations. 



93 

Great nations have culminated in their growth, degenerated from their 
once proud eminence in culture, science, and art, and naught remains but 
the awful silence of the solitude above the deep-buried ruins, once the 
sites of ancient empires, where millions of men had habitations of grandeur. 
Their commerce decayed ; their arts died ; trade rotted, for men became 
corrupt, lapsed into effeminacy, and nations passed into oblivion. Shall 
that same decay which blotted out them, seize upon us, and darkness 
settle down on all our hills? Shall mighty cities crumble to earth, and 
ruin and desolation cover our vast domain ? No, my countrymen, let it not 
be so. Let the fabric of our liberties, growing in increasing grandeur as 
years glide past, be, next to the love of God, the idol of our hearts. Let 
j'ustice, equity, liberty, equality, wisdom, frugality and virtue, be the 
priceless jewels of our people forever, and our star of empire will glow 
with surpassing splendor in the firmament of nations, when God shall 
summon nations and men from the labors of earth, at the end of time. 



94 



CENTENNIAL ORATION 

BY GEO. A. HOADLET. 

[Delivered at the Celebration in Sheffield, June 19, 1876.] 



" From the dark portals of the Star Chamber, and in the stern acts of 
uniformity, the Pilgrims received a commission more efficient than any 
that ever bore the royal seal. Their banishment to Holland was fortu- 
nate ; the decline of their little company in the strange land was fortunate ; 
the difficulties which they experienced in obtaining the royal consent to 
banish themselves to this wilderness, were fortunate ; all the tears and 
heart-breakings of that ever-memorable parting at Delfthaven, had the 
happiest influence on the rising destinies of New England. All this puri- 
fied the ranks of the settlers. These rough touches of fortune brushed off 
the light, uncertain, selfish spirits. They made it a grave, solemn, self- 
denying expedition, and required of those who engaged in it, to be so, 
too. They cast a broad shadow of thought and seriousness over the 
cause ; and, if this sometimes deepened into melancholy and bitterness, 
can we find no apology for such a human weakness?" 

From time immemorial, slight causes have been productive of the 
greatest effects ; but where, in the story of all time, can you point to a 
beginning apparently so small, that has so materially affected the interests 
of humanity? 

A floating village, of a hundred and one souls, comes buffeting the 
waves, and presents itself to the forbidding shores of Massachusetts. 
Turn the pages of history, and tell me what promise this child of 
adversity gives of growth to a perfect manhood ? How long will it be 
before this little company will be cut off by the many savage tribes 
which surround it ? Was it hunger ? Was it sickness and want ? Was it 
the dread severity of the cold ? Was it the pitiless storm of winter, beating 
upon the defenceless heads of women and children ? Was it one, or all of 
these combined, that conspired to bring this forlorn hope of colonization 
to its destruction ? And is it possible that all this could not extinguish 
the spark of liberty that dawned upon free America ? 

Yes, that spark lived, though life itself were gone ; and we, in whose 
veins flows the blood of the Pilgrims, stand here to-day as living proofs 
of its existence. 



95 

Puritanism has been defined as " Religion struggling for the people," 
and even its enemies were compelled to say that " its absurdities were 
the shelter for the noble principles of liberty." Its establishment in our 
land, thus in its infancy, was but the beginning of these noble principles 
that have passed from the uncertain attempts of childhood to the unshaken 
conviction that experience gives to mature life. To establish these prin- 
ciples, required men of bold bearing and original conceptions. Such 
men were not wanting among the colonists. Such a man was Miles 
Standish, their military leader. Being a soldier in his education, and by 
his preference, he met the Indians in the only way that could be effectual : 
ready to make peace with them at any time, he did not hesitate to return 
their attacks with such boldness and vigor, that his name, of all others in 
the colony, became a terror to them. 

Gov. Bradford was also eminent for his determination and energy ; for, 
when Canonicus, Sachem of the Narragansetts, sent a bundle of arrows, 
wrapped in the skin of a rattlesnake, as a token of his defiance, Bradford 
stuffed the same skin with powder and ball, and returned it. The super- 
stitious savages were filled with terror at the unknown danger which 
their vivid imaginations pictured to them, and the dreaded charm passed 
from hand to hand, until at last it returned to Plymouth. 

Volumes have been written, and many will yet be written, concerning 
the birth-time of our country, its customs, habits, dress, speech, and, 
above all, its lasting principles of right, of which these were only the 
legitimate fruits. 

On all points, except religion and morality, the Puritans held to indi- 
vidual freedom ; but, having been persecuted for these at home, it is not 
at all strange that they should compel those who came to them, to the 
same strictness of observance as themselves. But this strictness brought 
with it its reward, and this purity of morals completed the picture of 
colonial happiness. 

A record of the time tells us that one might dwell there, from year to 
year, and not see a drunkard, or hear an oath, or meet a beggar. The 
consequence was universal health, one of the chief elements of public 
happiness, while the average duration of life, compared with that in 
Europe, was doubled. The strictness of the Puritans was also noted 
among the other colonies which sprang up on the eastern coast. A story 
is told of an itinerant preacher, who, while preaching at Portsmouth, 
remindedathe people that, as they had come thither for the purpose of free 
worship, they ought to be very religious. " Sir, you are quite mistaken," 
was the reply ; " you think you are speaking to the people of Massa- 
chusetts Bay. Our main end is to catch fish." 

Within the first fifteen years, which time included almost all the emi- 
gration from England, there came over four thousand families. Their 



96 

descendants are now not less than five millions. Each family has 
increased on the average to more than a thousand souls. Besides con- 
stituting almost the entire population of Massachusetts, Connecticut, 
Vermont, and Rhode Island, they make up more than one-half the inhabi- 
tants of New York and Ohio, and have representatives, worthy of them, in 
every State and Territory of the Union. Poets have loved to sing the 
praises of chivalry, and historians to eulogize its virtues and benefits 5 
but Puritanism has been more beneficial to mankind. If it was sectarian, 
Chivalry was dissolute. The knights were brave from gallantry ; the 
Puritans, from fear of God. The knights were proud of loyalty ; the 
Puritans, of liberty. But the golden age of Puritanism has passed away. 
Time has softened its asperities, hidden its dangers, and added new lustre 
to its undying virtues. 

If we could have stood on the summit of Mount Everett, one hundred 
and fifty years ago to-day, our gaze would have rested upon an unbroken 
wilderness; both hill and valley, mountain and plain, would have pre- 
sented the picture of a sea of living green, whose silence was unbroken, 
save by the sharp twang of the bow, as it sent the arrow on its mission 
of death, or the dismal howling of the wolf, as he vented his hatred to 
all things living. 

On a beautiful afternoon in June, 1725, a daughter of Obadiah 
Noble — the first white woman that came into town — reached Sheffield 
from Westfield, having travelled the distance, forty miles, on horseback. 
Her father had spent the previous winter here among the Indians, and, 
on the approach of summer, went to bring his daughter, who was then 
but sixteen years old. Many years have passed since the soul of this 
daring woman has been called to solve the mysteries of the Great 
Unknown, but the spirit which actuated her lives with us to-day ; and 
.there are many earnest women in the company before me, who would 
gladly endure all the danger and weariness through which she was 
called to pass, could they give to freedom a greater birthright, and to 
womanhood a nobler name. 

I have spoken of the healthfulness of the colonies : let me cite an 
example of longevity, which is to be found in our own town. Another 
daughter of Mr. Noble married Ebenezer Smith, but died in a short 
time, leaving one child. This child Mr. Smith took in a basket, which 
a squaw wove for him, on horseback, to his father's home, in Westfield. 
Some time after his return he married Sarah Shaler, who liv^d to the 
advanced age of one hundred and two years and four months; her 
daughter, Sarah Marvin, lived to be ninety-two ; her granddaughter, 
Lydia Trowbridge, died in her ninety-third year, and two of her great 
granddaughters are with us to-day, having attained the honorable ages 
of eighty-five and eighty-seven years. This is not an isolated case, but 



97 

one of many ; and I need give no names to recall to every one of yon 
the memory of those pioneers of our town, whose descendants fill an 
honorable place in our midst, or lead the van in other and newer sections 
of the land. 

To ask why did the Revolution break out, is like asking, why does a 
boy become a man ? If the boy lives, can he help it 1 The so-called 
causes of the Revolution were only developments of that which was in 
the very nature of things ; and the Declaration of Independence was but 
the natural sequel to the compact signed in the cabin of the Mayflower. 
At the beginning of the alienation of the colonies, nothing was further 
from the minds of the people than separation from the mother-country. 
Like all monopolists, England feared even so unpretending a rival as 
America then formed, and sought to retard its development, by suppress- 
ing manufactures and commerce, at every point. Heavy expenditures 
having been incurred in the old French and Indian war, it was decided 
that the colonies should help pay the debt. But the colonists w^ere not 
represented in parliament, and they held that " taxation, without repre- 
sentation, is tyranny." These oppressive taxes induced a great deal of 
smuggling, and the royal collector might frequently be seen searching 
private houses for smuggled goods. At the General Court, at Boston, 
James Otis eloquently denounced these acts : " To my dying day," said 
he "I will oppose, with all the powers and faculties God has given me, 
all such instruments of slavery on the one hand, and villany on the 
other." "Then and there," writes John Adams, "the trumpet of the 
Revolution was sounded." 

The Stamp Act — which required that all legal documents should be 
executed on paper bearing an English stamp, of the value of from three 
pence to six pounds, and that all newspapers and pamphlets should pay 
a corresponding tax — now went into operation. Soldiers were also sent 
to enforce the law, and the colonists were ordered to provide for their 
sustenance. The announcement of these obnoxious laws aroused the 
land in every direction. The Assembly of Virginia, being in session at 
the time, Patrick Henry, the youngest member of the House, hastily 
drew up, on the leaf of an old book, a series of resolutions denying the 
right of parliament to tax the colonies. These were presented, accom- 
panied by a speech burning with patriotism, in which he said : " Caesar 
had his Brutus, Charles I his Cromwell, and George III " — here he 
paused until the cry of treason, which had arisen from several parts of 
the House, had subsided — " may profit by their example. If this be 
treason, make the most of it." 

Associations, which took the name of " Sons of Liberty," met under 
the Liberty-Tree, on Boston Common, to express their indignation. At 
Portsmouth, a coffin inscribed, " Liberty, aged 145 years," was borne 



98 

to an open grave, with solemn tread, attended by muffled drums ; minute 
guns were fired, the grave was reached, the funeral oration was pro- 
nounced, the coffin lowered, when suddenly signs of life were said to be 
discovered. The coffin was raised, a new inscription, " Liberty Re- 
vived," was put upon it, bells rang, music sounded, and a jubilee ensued. 
Massachusetts, ever in advance in the works of liberty, issued a call 
for a convention, to be held in New York. South Carolina endorsed the 
call ; the convention met in October, and voted a declaration of rights 
and memorials to the king and parliament. 

This sturdy opposition caused the Stamp Act to be repealed, but par- 
liament still adhered to the right to tax the colonies. The tax upon 
tea, which' resulted in the famous "Boston tea-party," was not enough 
to increase its cost materially, but it upheld the very privilege that the 
colonists denied ; and England made a great mistake in thinking that 
what the colonists decried was the tax. 

Boston was considered as the hotbed of the rebellion, and " the king, 
his ministers, parliament, and all Great Britain, set themselves to subdue 
this one stubborn little town on the sterile coasts of Massachusetts Bay." 

For this purpose General Gage was sent thither, with two regiments 
of British soldiers. Their entrance, on a quiet Sunday morning, with 
flags flying and drums beating, roused all the prejudices of a Sabbath- 
loving people. Meanwhile, stores were being collected at Concord. 
General Gage determined to seize them, and left Boston secretly, about 
eleven o'clock in the evening, with eight hundred regulars, for that 
purpose. But " eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," and the move- 
ment was hardly begun ere the news was flying far in advance of them, 
carried by " Paul Revere in his midnight ride : " 

" A hurry of hoofs in the village street, 
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark; 
And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark, 

Struck out by a steed that flies fearless and fleet : 
That was all ! And yet, through the gloom and the light, 
The fate of a nation was riding that night; 
And the spark struck out by the steed in Ids flight. 

Kindled the land into flame with its heat." 

The news of the fight at Lexington reached Sheffield on the 20th, 
about noon, and the next morning, at sunrise, the regiment of Southern 
Berkshire, commanded by our townsman, Colonel, afterwards General, 
John Fellows, was on its way to the scene of action. We have only to 
turn to the story of Bunker Hill, to learn how these men fought for their 
liberty and homes. Ticonderoga, Crown Point, Trenton, Princeton ! — 
all these places are rendered dear to us by the blood spilled there, which 
sealed for us the bond of security and [peace, in this beautiful valley of 
the Housatonic. 



99 

On the 6th of July, 1774, a convention of several towns of the county 
was held at Stockbriclge, in which Sheffield was well represented. One 
has only to read the resolutions of that convention, to feel the deep 
under-current of patriotism which pervaded the whole country. Then 
came the town-meeting, that we so much honor this day. 

" At a legal town-meeting of the inhabitants of the town of Sheffield, 
on Tuesday, June 18th, 1776, it was put to vote whether the inhabit- 
ants of the S d town of Sheffield, should the Hon ble Continental Congress 
in their wisdom think prudent, and for the interest and safety of the 
American colonies to declare S d colonies independent of the Kingdom of 
G t Britain, they, the inhabitants of S d Sheffield, will solemnly engage 
with their lives and fortunes to support them in their measures. Voted 
in the Affirmative. Two dissenting only." 

Well done, old town ! The Revolutionary Fathers did not disgrace 
the pioneers ; and, had the same question been reserved for our decision, 
we would not disgrace them. One thing that our forefathers possessed 
to so great an extent that it nearly amounted to a cardinal virtue, was, 
grit. That unconquerable spirit of perseverance that rendered those 
things that would have been unsurmountable barriers to others, only 
slight obstacles in their pathway. How they toiled ! The mandate, 
" By the sweat of thy brow thou shalt eat bread," was to them no idle 
threat, but a stern reality. The wilderness was to be won from the 
domain of the wild beast and the savage, and made a fit dwelling-place 
for the noblest work of God. Their work was one of years, but the 
forest soon fell beneath the sturdy stroke of the axe ; and the denizens of 
the wood, bereft of its protection, eagerly fled at the approach of civiliza- 
tion. As the work of laying the corner-stones of our nation was one of 
muscle and brain, so is the work of improving and beautifying the super- 
structure to be one of brain and muscle. The same elements are required 
in the work now, as were used then, but they have changed places. The 
chief labor, then, was manual ; now, it is intellectual. Looking back 
through the dim vista of years, we can read the story of all time, and it 
tells us that the most indelible impress is that made by the intellect, and 
the culture attained in its use. We stand here to-day, and calmly read 
this story, but time passes on, and gray heads and bowed forms will soon 
be replaced by those who now are in the prime of life. What work we 
do, must be done quickly, and, to be lasting, it must be brain- work. 

It is every seeker after refined culture whom Shakespeare leads into 
that storm-tossed region, the human soul. It was all mankind that 
Byron thrilled anew with his passionate poetry. It was for all Christian 
readers that Southey interwove, with the heathen fable, such bright 
threads of the Christian faith. And it is for every one that the refining 
influences of ^literary culture form the stepping-stones to higher planes 



100 

of happiness in life. Kings and nations have long sought to solve the 
intricate problem of government. Dynasties have sprung into being, led 
on by some indomitable will ; have increased their rule at the expense of 
others, and, in their turn, have been swallowed up by some more powerful 
demagogue. 

But our government is like our noble old Elm. Look how its roots 
reach deep into the soil for nourishment ! See its trunk, ribbed and bound 
together as with iron bands ! The wintry storms of adversity only serve 
to lay up new stores for its more rapid growth, when the sun of prosperity 
shines upon it in full vigor. Mark how the thick limbs spread out to 
bear the branches, twigs, and leaves to the open sunlight and free ah-. 
In its roots, I see the eternal truths that founded our nation. In its 
trunk, the Union itself, in which there is lasting strength. In its 
spreading branches, the several States, and we may call ourselves its 
foliage. 



101 



BRIEF SKETCH OF THE REMARKS OF 

WILLIAM G. BATES, OE WESTFIELD. 

[Intended to have been made at the Sheffield Centennial.] 

It seems to me that none of the speakers have given to the men of 
Sheffield in June, 1776, the approbation that was their due. In my 
opinion, they have failed to appreciate, fully, the circumstances in which 
those persons were situated. Let us briefly recall them. Sheffield was 
not then the beautiful and flourishing town that it now is, but it was 
a frontier town, recently incorporated, and was better known as the Lower 
Housatonic Proprietary, than by its corporate name of Sheffield. Its 
inhabitants were few in number, living in different parts of the town, and 
the small settlements in the county were still smaller in their concen- 
trated force. 

Westfield, its parent town, was its nearest neighbor on the east ; and 
though a road had been purchased by Colonel Ashley from the Indians, 
two miles in width, to connect the two towns, yet it was merely a bridle- 
path for the whole distance. 

It will be recollected, that, though hostilities had been kept up for a 
year between the colonies and the mother-country, still there had been no 
general idea of a final separation. The subject had been discussed, as a 
mooted question, but there were few persons who had determined thai it 
was a thing to be ! When Patrick Henry made his eloquent speech in the 
House of Burgesses, he thundered his eloquence into unwilling ears ; and ; 
but for the enthusiasm and influence of the Adamses, it is probable 
that the Declaration of July 4th would have been longer delayed. 

It was just prior to this Declaration, that the wish was expressed in 
Congress to bear the sentiments of the people upon this momentous 



102 

question ; and at once, without time to take counsel, with no opportunity 
to consult with other towns, and feel the pulse of the rest of the common- 
wealth, the inhabitants of this scattered frontier town met to deliberate 
upon this great national question. 

The words of the vote indicate the calm deliberation of the people. 
They were not the rash expressions of a Falstaff and a Captain Bobadil, 
to be uttered, and taken back on the approach of danger, but the 
deliberate sentiments of a body of men who weighed what they said, 
in calmness and coolness, and who submitted to the Representatives in 
Congress, who knew, better than they could know, the extent and the 
strength of the popular feeling of the colonies; and they were prepared 
to abide by the decision to which Congress should come. It was, there- 
fore, an act of well-considered, deliberate bravery ; and it evidenced the 
existence of a spirit of heroism in the men of this sparsely-populated 
frontier town, of which no brighter example is recorded in history. 

I have been requested to speak of the " Ashleys," one of whom, Col- 
onel John Ashley, was from Westfield, one of the settlers of Sheffield, 
one of the judges of the court for a long period, and whose son, General 
John Ashley, was an efficient officer at a critical period succeeding the 
Revolution, during the Shays' Rebellion.* 

Just before the close of the rebellion, the period of enlistment of his 
troops expired, and they were preparing to leave the army and return to 
their homes. 

The General — for he had no means at his command for retaining them 
— determined to try the effect of his eloquence. Accordingly, he ordered 
them to parade, and then advanced to address them. He reminded them 
of the situation of the country : a portion of the inhabitants in arms 
against a paternal government ; a force of patriotic citizens, with arms 
in their hands, prepared to crush them, and sustain the government ; 
the expiration of their enlistment ; the rumor that a portion of them 
were preparing to disband and return to their homes, now just at the 
very time when success was within their grasp. But, he continued, if 
there were any cowards in his command ; any weak and timorous men, 
who did not dare to stay and face the enemy, they were at liberty to 
retire ; he did not want any cowards to stay with the brave men who 
were to stay with him, and win the gratitude of the country. " Accord- 
ingly," he said, " I am going to see who are the brave men, and who are 
the cowards among you. I wish you to give me your attention. When 
I give the word, ' Shoulder arms,' let every brave man bring his 
musket promptly to his shoulder, and let every coward slink back out 
of the ranks." He stopped a moment to discover the effect of his 

* The above facts were given ine by some of the venerable inhabitants of Sheffield 
and Ashley Falls, who are now dead. 



103 

eloquence, then drew his sword, and added, with a strong oath : " But, 
remember, that I'll run the first man through the body that leaves the 
ranks ! Attention, fellow-soldiers ! Shoulder arms ! " Every man's mus- 
ket sprung to the shoulder, and not a soldier broke the ranks. Whether 
the result was owing to the eloquence of the General, or to his signifi- 
cant action at its conclusion, did not appear, but the soldiers remained 
with him to squelch the rebellion in the county of Berkshire. 

When General Ashley became assured of the patriotic determination 
of his troops, he proceeded firmly and vigorously to enforce the power of 
the government. Pursuing the policy that was enjoined upon him, he 
resorted to parley, and almost to entreaty, in order to induce his misguided 
countrymen to return to their allegiance. At last, however, his efforts 
became unavailing. 

The reluctance which had restrained him from using his power upon 
them, was attributed to a fear of the consequences; and an attack was 
made upon his force. He then saw that the time for energetic action had 
come, and at last he issued that famous order, which has made his name 
famous : " Pour in your fire, my boys, and may God have mercy on 
their souls." 

Should any person desire to read a thrilling story of the incidents of 
these times, he will find them related in one of the Annuals, published 
some thirty years ago. The tale was written by Miss Catherine 
Sedgwick. 




CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION 



OF THE 



Town of Sheffield, 



BERKSHIRE CO., MASS. 



June 18th and 19th, 1876. 



BY THE SECRETARIES OF THE COMMITTEE APPOINTED BY THE TOWN. 



SHEFFIELD 

1876. 



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